How to Troubleshoot API Errors and Reduce MTTD/R

certificate
Recording and certification are available to Multipass and Full ticket holders only
Please login if you have one.
Rate this content
Bookmark

The benefits of Node.js to develop real-time applications at scale are very well known. As Node.js architectures get more and more complex, visualization of your microservices-based architecture is crucial. However, the visualization of microservices is incredibly complex given the scale and the transactions across them. In this workshop, you will learn how to leverage service maps to instantly understand your architecture and troubleshoot any API error.

We will write a simple Express application and explore best practices when using Express. Then, we’ll deploy the application on AWS, integrate the environment with Epsagon, and deep-dive into various features of the platform to enable immediate detection and fast troubleshooting of application errors. Goals: Visualizing your architecture, monitoring your applications, reducing your mean time to detection and recovery (MTTD and MTTR).


Who should attend?
DevOps, Engineers, Cloud Architects, IT, Software Developers, Solution Architects and Engineers, SREs, and anyone who is running microservice-based applications (Kubernetes, containers, serverless functions, and more) in the cloud.



Prerequisites

  • We prefer to use VSCode for a better experience (other IDEs are fine)
  • Preinstall npm and node
  •         Pre-existing AWS Account - You can create a free tier here
  •         Attendees are free to create an Epsagon account in advance here, not mandatory





This workshop has been presented at Node Congress 2021, check out the latest edition of this JavaScript Conference.

FAQ

Observability in modern Node.js applications refers to the ability to monitor and understand the internal states of systems by examining their outputs. It involves tracking and analyzing metrics, logs, and traces to gain insights into application performance and behavior, especially in complex distributed systems.

Observability can be challenging in distributed applications due to the complexity of managing multiple components that interact with each other. Tracing the flow of requests and understanding dependencies across services becomes difficult, making it hard to pinpoint issues and optimize performance.

AWS Lambda is a serverless compute service that allows you to run code without provisioning or managing servers. It automatically manages the compute resources, scaling them as needed. It's used for deploying applications by allowing you to upload your code, which Lambda executes in response to events such as HTTP requests through Amazon API Gateway.

Distributed tracing is the process of tracking a request as it travels through various components of a distributed system. It is important because it helps developers understand the path of requests, diagnose bottlenecks, and identify failures across complex microservices architectures.

Epsagon specializes in providing observability solutions for distributed systems by offering automated tracing and monitoring tools. These tools help in visualizing and understanding the behavior of applications, enabling quick identification and resolution of issues within cloud-native environments.

Gal Bashan
Gal Bashan
149 min
15 Jul, 2021

Comments

Sign in or register to post your comment.
Video Summary and Transcription
Today's workshop focused on observability in modern Node.js applications and the challenges in distributed systems. The workshop covered building an Express application, making API requests, deploying to AWS Lambda, and integrating with Epsilon for tracing and troubleshooting. Epsilon provides a comprehensive solution for monitoring and troubleshooting, including visualizing trace data, indexing requests, and creating alerts. The workshop also included a treasure hunt contest to find a hidden password within the APIs. Overall, the workshop emphasized the importance of observability and provided practical tools and techniques for implementing it in real-world applications.
Video transcription and chapters available for users with access.

Watch more workshops on topic

Node.js Masterclass
Node Congress 2023Node Congress 2023
109 min
Node.js Masterclass
Top Content
Workshop
Matteo Collina
Matteo Collina
Have you ever struggled with designing and structuring your Node.js applications? Building applications that are well organised, testable and extendable is not always easy. It can often turn out to be a lot more complicated than you expect it to be. In this live event Matteo will show you how he builds Node.js applications from scratch. You’ll learn how he approaches application design, and the philosophies that he applies to create modular, maintainable and effective applications.

Level: intermediate
Hands-on with AG Grid's React Data Grid
React Summit 2022React Summit 2022
147 min
Hands-on with AG Grid's React Data Grid
Top Content
WorkshopFree
Sean Landsman
Sean Landsman
Get started with AG Grid React Data Grid with a hands-on tutorial from the core team that will take you through the steps of creating your first grid, including how to configure the grid with simple properties and custom components. AG Grid community edition is completely free to use in commercial applications, so you'll learn a powerful tool that you can immediately add to your projects. You'll also discover how to load data into the grid and different ways to add custom rendering to the grid. By the end of the workshop, you will have created an AG Grid React Data Grid and customized with functional React components.- Getting started and installing AG Grid- Configuring sorting, filtering, pagination- Loading data into the grid- The grid API- Using hooks and functional components with AG Grid- Capabilities of the free community edition of AG Grid- Customizing the grid with React Components
Build and Deploy a Backend With Fastify & Platformatic
JSNation 2023JSNation 2023
104 min
Build and Deploy a Backend With Fastify & Platformatic
WorkshopFree
Matteo Collina
Matteo Collina
Platformatic allows you to rapidly develop GraphQL and REST APIs with minimal effort. The best part is that it also allows you to unleash the full potential of Node.js and Fastify whenever you need to. You can fully customise a Platformatic application by writing your own additional features and plugins. In the workshop, we’ll cover both our Open Source modules and our Cloud offering:- Platformatic OSS (open-source software) — Tools and libraries for rapidly building robust applications with Node.js (https://oss.platformatic.dev/).- Platformatic Cloud (currently in beta) — Our hosting platform that includes features such as preview apps, built-in metrics and integration with your Git flow (https://platformatic.dev/). 
In this workshop you'll learn how to develop APIs with Fastify and deploy them to the Platformatic Cloud.
Building GraphQL APIs on top of Ethereum with The Graph
GraphQL Galaxy 2021GraphQL Galaxy 2021
48 min
Building GraphQL APIs on top of Ethereum with The Graph
WorkshopFree
Nader Dabit
Nader Dabit
The Graph is an indexing protocol for querying networks like Ethereum, IPFS, and other blockchains. Anyone can build and publish open APIs, called subgraphs, making data easily accessible.

In this workshop you’ll learn how to build a subgraph that indexes NFT blockchain data from the Foundation smart contract. We’ll deploy the API, and learn how to perform queries to retrieve data using various types of data access patterns, implementing filters and sorting.

By the end of the workshop, you should understand how to build and deploy performant APIs to The Graph to index data from any smart contract deployed to Ethereum.
Building a Hyper Fast Web Server with Deno
JSNation Live 2021JSNation Live 2021
156 min
Building a Hyper Fast Web Server with Deno
WorkshopFree
Matt Landers
Will Johnston
2 authors
Deno 1.9 introduced a new web server API that takes advantage of Hyper, a fast and correct HTTP implementation for Rust. Using this API instead of the std/http implementation increases performance and provides support for HTTP2. In this workshop, learn how to create a web server utilizing Hyper under the hood and boost the performance for your web apps.
0 to Auth in an Hour Using NodeJS SDK
Node Congress 2023Node Congress 2023
63 min
0 to Auth in an Hour Using NodeJS SDK
WorkshopFree
Asaf Shen
Asaf Shen
Passwordless authentication may seem complex, but it is simple to add it to any app using the right tool.
We will enhance a full-stack JS application (Node.JS backend + React frontend) to authenticate users with OAuth (social login) and One Time Passwords (email), including:- User authentication - Managing user interactions, returning session / refresh JWTs- Session management and validation - Storing the session for subsequent client requests, validating / refreshing sessions
At the end of the workshop, we will also touch on another approach to code authentication using frontend Descope Flows (drag-and-drop workflows), while keeping only session validation in the backend. With this, we will also show how easy it is to enable biometrics and other passwordless authentication methods.
Table of contents- A quick intro to core authentication concepts- Coding- Why passwordless matters
Prerequisites- IDE for your choice- Node 18 or higher

Check out more articles and videos

We constantly think of articles and videos that might spark Git people interest / skill us up or help building a stellar career

It's a Jungle Out There: What's Really Going on Inside Your Node_Modules Folder
Node Congress 2022Node Congress 2022
26 min
It's a Jungle Out There: What's Really Going on Inside Your Node_Modules Folder
Top Content
The talk discusses the importance of supply chain security in the open source ecosystem, highlighting the risks of relying on open source code without proper code review. It explores the trend of supply chain attacks and the need for a new approach to detect and block malicious dependencies. The talk also introduces Socket, a tool that assesses the security of packages and provides automation and analysis to protect against malware and supply chain attacks. It emphasizes the need to prioritize security in software development and offers insights into potential solutions such as realms and Deno's command line flags.
Towards a Standard Library for JavaScript Runtimes
Node Congress 2022Node Congress 2022
34 min
Towards a Standard Library for JavaScript Runtimes
Top Content
There is a need for a standard library of APIs for JavaScript runtimes, as there are currently multiple ways to perform fundamental tasks like base64 encoding. JavaScript runtimes have historically lacked a standard library, causing friction and difficulty for developers. The idea of a small core has both benefits and drawbacks, with some runtimes abusing it to limit innovation. There is a misalignment between Node and web browsers in terms of functionality and API standards. The proposal is to involve browser developers in conversations about API standardization and to create a common standard library for JavaScript runtimes.
Get rid of your API schemas with tRPC
React Day Berlin 2022React Day Berlin 2022
29 min
Get rid of your API schemas with tRPC
Today's Talk introduces TRPC, a library that eliminates the need for code generation and provides type safety and better collaboration between front-end and back-end. TRPC is demonstrated in a Next JS application integrated with Prisma, allowing for easy implementation and interaction with the database. The library allows for seamless usage in the client, with automatic procedure renaming and the ability to call methods without generating types. TRPC's client-server interaction is based on HTTP requests and allows for easy debugging and tracing. The library also provides runtime type check and validation using Zod.
ESM Loaders: Enhancing Module Loading in Node.js
JSNation 2023JSNation 2023
22 min
ESM Loaders: Enhancing Module Loading in Node.js
ESM Loaders enhance module loading in Node.js by resolving URLs and reading files from the disk. Module loaders can override modules and change how they are found. Enhancing the loading phase involves loading directly from HTTP and loading TypeScript code without building it. The loader in the module URL handles URL resolution and uses fetch to fetch the source code. Loaders can be chained together to load from different sources, transform source code, and resolve URLs differently. The future of module loading enhancements is promising and simple to use.
Out of the Box Node.js Diagnostics
Node Congress 2022Node Congress 2022
34 min
Out of the Box Node.js Diagnostics
This talk covers various techniques for getting diagnostics information out of Node.js, including debugging with environment variables, handling warnings and deprecations, tracing uncaught exceptions and process exit, using the v8 inspector and dev tools, and generating diagnostic reports. The speaker also mentions areas for improvement in Node.js diagnostics and provides resources for learning and contributing. Additionally, the responsibilities of the Technical Steering Committee in the TS community are discussed.
Step aside resolvers: a new approach to GraphQL execution
GraphQL Galaxy 2022GraphQL Galaxy 2022
16 min
Step aside resolvers: a new approach to GraphQL execution
GraphQL has made a huge impact in the way we build client applications, websites, and mobile apps. Despite the dominance of resolvers, the GraphQL specification does not mandate their use. Introducing Graphast, a new project that compiles GraphQL operations into execution and output plans, providing advanced optimizations. In GraphFast, instead of resolvers, we have plan resolvers that deal with future data. Graphfast plan resolvers are short and efficient, supporting all features of modern GraphQL.