The rise of single page apps (ie AngularJS) present some interesting problems for Ops. Specifically, the increased dependence on browser executed code means that real user experience monitoring is a must.
To that end I have reviewed some javascript agent monitoring solutions:
- sentry.io
- New Relic Browser
- AppDynamics Browser RUM
- Dynatrace UEM – Didn’t end up testing the SaaS offering
- Google Analytics with custom event push: http://www.davidverhasselt.com/an-easy-javascript-error-logger-using-ga/
The solution/s must have the following requirements:
- Must have:
- Detailed javascript error reporting
- Negligible performance impact
- Real user performance monitoring
- Effective single page app (AnglularJS support)
- Real time alerting
- Nice to have:
As our application is a single page Angular app, New Relic Browser requires that we pay US$130 for any single page app capability. The JavaScript error detection was not very impressive as uncaught exceptions outside of the angular app were not reported without angular integration.
Google Analytics with custom event push does not have any real time alerting which disqualifies it as an Ops solution.
AppDynamics Browser was easy to integrate, getting javascript error details in the console was straight forward but getting those errors to communication tools like slack was surprisingly difficult. Alerts are based on health checks which are breaking of metric thresholds – so I can send an alert saying there was more than 0 javascript errors in the last minute. But no details about the error and no direct link to the error.
Sentry.io simple to add monitoring, simple to get alerting with click through to all the javascript error info. No performance monitoring.
Conclusion sticking to the Unix philosophy, using sentry.io for javascript error alerting and AppDynamics Browser Lite for performance alerting. Both have free levels to get started (ongoing, not just 30 day trial).