graphql plugin hook - how to use it?

[zelongc]

I am woking on a nodejs + koa based graphql server and now needs the APM monitoring for it.
The minimum default option works fne to me, by having tracer.init() without any other magic, I can see my spans injested to datadog. Now I am trying to build a dashboard to show the metric of success/failure number given different graphql method. Could anyone point me how do I do it? I found some example kinda useful such as

tracer.init();
tracer.use('graphql', {
  depth: -1,
  variables: (variables) => variables,
  hooks: {
    execute: (span, args) => {}
 }
});

However I can't find any reference on what exactly does args do. I I want to report this is a failed reqeust even though HTTP status gonna be 200. is it the correct place to do so? and how do I do it?

Thanks!

[rochdev]

A span hook would definitely work for this use case. The args should have the same structure as its equivalent directly in GraphQL. Once you detect that the execution should be an error, the error can be set with span.setTag('error', error) if you have an error object or span.setTag('error', true) otherwise.

[anmol242]

@zelongc You can try this:

• Initialize the APM tracer

tracer.init();

• Set up APM for GraphQL:

tracer.use('graphql', {
  depth: -1,
  variables: (variables) => variables,
  hooks: {
    execute: (span, args) => {}
  }
});

The tracer.use configures APM specifically for GraphQL. Within the hooks object, you can define a execute function to customize the behavior for each GraphQL execution.

The args parameter in the execute function represents the arguments passed to the GraphQL execution function. It can provide you with contextual information about the GraphQL execution, such as the operation name, query/mutation, and variables.

• To report a failed request, even if the HTTP status is 200, you can utilize the execute hook. Inside the execute function, you can access the span object, which represents the span for the current GraphQL execution. You can then modify the span attributes to indicate a failure.

tracer.use('graphql', {
  depth: -1,
  variables: (variables) => variables,
  hooks: {
    execute: (span, args) => {
      if (/* Your condition to determine failure */) {
        span.setTag('http.status_code', 500); // Set a custom HTTP status code tag
        span.setTag('error', true); // Mark the span as an error
      }
    }
  }
});

By setting the appropriate tags and attributes on the span object, you can capture the failure information in DataDog and use it to create your dashboard.

Remember to customize the condition inside the execute hook to match your criteria for determining a failed request.