Web application metrics collecting using REST (Dynatrace API)

[bpisarenko]

Hello everyone!

I am new in the Dynatrace. And I started to investigate this great product recently. At the moment I have a task which I should solve with Dynatrace. The short explanation of my problem:

1. There is the web-application where I have to measure some user activities and operations.
2. I have no access to the server-side that reason I can't use OneAgent.
3. I have no access to the client source code that reason I can't use RUM JS code.
4. In my browser I can't use any extensions that reason I can't use the RUM browser extension.
5. I only have a Dynatrace SaaS account where I created a new application. And I can send data to Dynatrace API only.

Consequently, I have several questions:

1. Can I send via REST (Dynatrace API) some metrics(user operations/application time execution) using external instruments (e.g. Selenium Web Driver & RestAssure or, stupidly using Postman)?
2. If I can, how can I attach/bind those metrics to an existing application?
3. Should I use existing metrics or create my custom ones?
4. Where can I watch them next? In standard charts or in custom ones?

[ChadTurner]

@Bohdan P. This is quite a unique situation. Ideally, you'd want to have the Dynatrace Oneagent installed. If you are unable to install the oneagent, you can grab metrics via Agentless monitoring. You can also leverage bringing in data from other platforms via the API, and the beauty of this is that once this data is in Dynatrace, for the most part, you can use all of the charting, sorting, filtering and alerting within Dynatrace.

https://www.dynatrace.com/support/help/how-to-use-dynatrace/real-user-monitoring/setup-and-configura...

[bpisarenko]

@Chad T. Thanks for your flash reaction on my question.

I had explored the documentation that you pointed. But I didn't find an answer to my questions there. No approaches from described are fit me.

[ChadTurner]

since your situation is so unique due to access - i would highly recommend putting in a support ticket so support staff can assist you and get your data flowing.

[bpisarenko]

Thanks for your advice. I will try it.

[ChadTurner]

@Wolfgang B. just posted a possible solution, I'd give that a shot!

[wolfgang_beer · Accepted solution]

Why not use the newly introduced metrics ingest API endpoint. Its extremely flexible, powerful and you can add any combination of key value pairs to describe your custom data. And best of all you can easily attach it to any manual created RUM application or any other kind of Smartscape entity.

See help here:

https://www.dynatrace.com/support/help/dynatrace-api/environment-api/metric-v2/post-ingest-metrics/

Best greetings,

Wolfgang

[bpisarenko]

Thanks. I will try.

[AntonioSousa]

@Wolfgang B.,

I hadn't noticed the metrics ingest API 😞 It seems much alike ingesting into Influxdb. Is there some sort of standardization in this domain. I'll clearly be using it 🙂

[DanteP]

Hey @Wolfgang B. that ingest metrics look pretty neat. Does Davis use them in any way?

[bpisarenko]

Hi @Wolfgang B.

I did as you advised. I tried to use new metrics ingest API. But I got a fail. All metrics that I sent via ingest API are not available in Dynatrace Web. I can extract information about them via REST(Definitely, they were created). But I can't use them in the web interface to create data charts. Moreover, I can't even find them in the web interface. )

In Dynatrace documentation metrics ingest request is marked as "Early Adopted". And I suppose it's the reason for this behavior.

Actually, all metrics in the web interface that I came across have some prefix separated with a colon. But metrics ingest endpoint rejects metrics id with a colon. And at this point, we get a collision.

Moreover, I can't edit metrics created via metrics ingest API, I can't set name, can't set description.

I think, at the moment it is a raw tool and we need to wait for a new API release.

P.S.

I solved my case using RUM browser extension. Thanks much for your help.

[robert_schausbe]

Hi @Bohdan P.,

you can access metrics ingested via new ingest API in the Web UI via Explorer. You can find/navigate to if you access custom charts and look after the banner "Analyze multidimensional metrics from Prometheus, StatsD and others channels right on your dashboards".

In the future we will also provide the capability to store metadata on top of those metrics like description, display-name, unit.