Adding Application Insights to Gatsby
May 26, 2021
For some people who don’t know, Azure ApplicationInsights is quite similar to Google Analytics. It is used to monitor the application, identifying performance issue, users behavior, etc.
I’ve been using Google Analytics almost every time I created a website. However this time I want to try something different. For the past few years I’ve been quite heavily using ApplicationInsights, and I’m quite impressed with the data and feature that it provides. One thing I really like is the Source Map support for Javascript. This makes debugging production Javascript error easier because not only I can unminify the log, but I can also see the users journey before they encounter the error.
This means I can get both most important features of a website usage tracking (user data analysis and error debugging) using just 1 application.
Unfortunately I can’t find gatsby plugin for ApplicationInsights, but it’s not an issue because doing it manually is also quite straightforward. There are multiple approaches that I can use, for example using Helmet or install application-insights npm package. For this website, I want ApplicationInsights to be loaded as early as possible so that almost any unexpected errors can be captured. Hence I’m using snippet based setup
To do this, I’m using gatsby-ssr onPreRenderHTML method so that I can make sure the snippet is inserted at the top.
I modify slightly the snippet that’s provided in the link above by removing some commented codes and making it a bit React friendly. Here is how I apply the snippet
const appInsightsConfig = {
instrumentationKey: '',
disableAjaxTracking: true,
enableAutoRouteTracking: true
}
const appInsightsScript = {
__html: `!function(T,l,y){var S=T.location,k="script",D="instrumentationKey",C="ingestionendpoint",I="disableExceptionTracking",E="ai.device.",b="toLowerCase",w="crossOrigin",N="POST",e="appInsightsSDK",t=y.name||"appInsights";(y.name||T[e])&&(T[e]=t);var n=T[t]||function(d){var g=!1,f=!1,m={initialize:!0,queue:[],sv:"5",version:2,config:d};function v(e,t){var n={},a="Browser";return n[E+"id"]=a[b](),n[E+"type"]=a,n["ai.operation.name"]=S&&S.pathname||"_unknown_",n["ai.internal.sdkVersion"]="javascript:snippet_"+(m.sv||m.version),{time:function(){var e=new Date;function t(e){var t=""+e;return 1===t.length&&(t="0"+t),t}return e.getUTCFullYear()+"-"+t(1+e.getUTCMonth())+"-"+t(e.getUTCDate())+"T"+t(e.getUTCHours())+":"+t(e.getUTCMinutes())+":"+t(e.getUTCSeconds())+"."+((e.getUTCMilliseconds()/1e3).toFixed(3)+"").slice(2,5)+"Z"}(),iKey:e,name:"Microsoft.ApplicationInsights."+e.replace(/-/g,"")+"."+t,sampleRate:100,tags:n,data:{baseData:{ver:2}}}}var h=d.url||y.src;if(h){function a(e){var t,n,a,i,r,o,s,c,u,p,l;g=!0,m.queue=[],f||(f=!0,t=h,s=function(){var e={},t=d.connectionString;if(t)for(var n=t.split(";"),a=0;a<n.length;a++){var i=n[a].split("=");2===i.length&&(e[i[0][b]()]=i[1])}if(!e[C]){var r=e.endpointsuffix,o=r?e.location:null;e[C]="https://"+(o?o+".":"")+"dc."+(r||"services.visualstudio.com")}return e}(),c=s[D]||d[D]||"",u=s[C],p=u?u+"/v2/track":d.endpointUrl,(l=[]).push((n="SDK LOAD Failure: Failed to load Application Insights SDK script (See stack for details)",a=t,i=p,(o=(r=v(c,"Exception")).data).baseType="ExceptionData",o.baseData.exceptions=[{typeName:"SDKLoadFailed",message:n.replace(/\./g,"-"),hasFullStack:!1,stack:n+"\\nSnippet failed to load ["+a+"] -- Telemetry is disabled\\nHelp Link: https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=2128109\\nHost: "+(S&&S.pathname||"_unknown_")+"\\nEndpoint: "+i,parsedStack:[]}],r)),l.push(function(e,t,n,a){var i=v(c,"Message"),r=i.data;r.baseType="MessageData";var o=r.baseData;return o.message='AI (Internal): 99 message:"'+("SDK LOAD Failure: Failed to load Application Insights SDK script (See stack for details) ("+n+")").replace(/\"/g,"")+'"',o.properties={endpoint:a},i}(0,0,t,p)),function(e,t){if(JSON){var n=T.fetch;if(n&&!y.useXhr)n(t,{method:N,body:JSON.stringify(e),mode:"cors"});else if(XMLHttpRequest){var a=new XMLHttpRequest;a.open(N,t),a.setRequestHeader("Content-type","application/json"),a.send(JSON.stringify(e))}}}(l,p))}function i(e,t){f||setTimeout(function(){!t&&m.core||a()},500)}var e=function(){var n=l.createElement(k);n.src=h;var e=y[w];return!e&&""!==e||"undefined"==n[w]||(n[w]=e),n.onload=i,n.onerror=a,n.onreadystatechange=function(e,t){"loaded"!==n.readyState&&"complete"!==n.readyState||i(0,t)},n}();y.ld<0?l.getElementsByTagName("head")[0].appendChild(e):setTimeout(function(){l.getElementsByTagName(k)[0].parentNode.appendChild(e)},y.ld||0)}try{m.cookie=l.cookie}catch(p){}function t(e){for(;e.length;)!function(t){m[t]=function(){var e=arguments;g||m.queue.push(function(){m[t].apply(m,e)})}}(e.pop())}var n="track",r="TrackPage",o="TrackEvent";t([n+"Event",n+"PageView",n+"Exception",n+"Trace",n+"DependencyData",n+"Metric",n+"PageViewPerformance","start"+r,"stop"+r,"start"+o,"stop"+o,"addTelemetryInitializer","setAuthenticatedUserContext","clearAuthenticatedUserContext","flush"]),m.SeverityLevel={Verbose:0,Information:1,Warning:2,Error:3,Critical:4};var s=(d.extensionConfig||{}).ApplicationInsightsAnalytics||{};if(!0!==d[I]&&!0!==s[I]){var c="onerror";t(["_"+c]);var u=T[c];T[c]=function(e,t,n,a,i){var r=u&&u(e,t,n,a,i);return!0!==r&&m["_"+c]({message:e,url:t,lineNumber:n,columnNumber:a,error:i}),r},d.autoExceptionInstrumented=!0}return m}(y.cfg);function a(){y.onInit&&y.onInit(n)}(T[t]=n).queue&&0===n.queue.length?(n.queue.push(a),n.trackPageView({})):a()}(window,document,{
src: "https://js.monitor.azure.com/scripts/b/ai.2.min.js",
cfg: ${JSON.stringify(appInsightsConfig)}});`,
};
const HeadComponents = [
<script key="appInsights"
type="text/javascript"
dangerouslySetInnerHTML={appInsightsScript}
></script>
];
export function onPreRenderHTML({ getHeadComponents, replaceHeadComponents }) {
let headComponents = getHeadComponents();
headComponents = [...HeadComponents, ...headComponents];
replaceHeadComponents(headComponents);
}As you noticed in the config, I set disableAjaxTracking and enableAutoRouteTracking true. This is because I’m not very interested to track the JSON contents loaded by gatsby and I want to easily track page navigation routing.