Node.js API Monitoring Tools

Software developers are turning their eyes on the popular JavaScript framework NodeJS for all further developments into software solutions. The hike in demand for this technology is creating a need for monitoring the performance of applications, servers, and all-important metrics. Let us look at some of the best monitoring tools available for this purpose.

What is Node.js API Monitoring?
In simple words, it is a way to monitor the application performance and finding the solution for bottlenecking the performance. It provides ways to do the following key checks on the application :

• CPU Usage metrics of application.
• Event Loop metrics of application.
• Memory usage metrics and leaks for application.
• Garbage collection metrics of the application.
• Request the Response time of the application.

Some Best tools for NodeJS API Monitoring are:

1. Retrace:
It is a cloud-based tool for application administration that provides error logs, centralized logs, log integration, and proactive server metrics. It has a user-friendly dashboard where the development team tracks the real-time performance of the code. It makes the developer’s task easy to monitor and identify the root cause of the issue.

Features of Retrace: 

• It provides a better cloud-based application.
• Provides monitoring of before and after development changes.
• It gives log integration and error logging for quick troubleshooting.
• Provides insights to regressed errors and quickly fixed them.

2. PM2:
PM2 is one of the most widespread monitoring tools for Node.js which makes your application running with easy monitoring of live production through a Web Interface or Command Line Interface (CLI). This can be installed into the application with Node Package Manager (). Which installs as a daemon process into it.

Features of PM2:

• Provides more reliable log management for the application.
• It provides a better cloud-based application.
• It makes clustering of Node.js apps easy.
• It provides container integration which makes it special from others.

3. Express Status Monitor:
Express Status Monitor is an open-source tool for monitoring the ExpressJs framework. As mostly all the applications use express middleware for writing CRUD operations it makes it necessary to have a dedicated tool to monitor APIs.   

Features of Express Status Monitor:

• Provides easy monitoring of the response time of the application.
• It makes it easy to monitor the memory and CPU utilization of an application.
• It can be easily used with an auth middleware which makes it secure.
• Provides status code for the application.

4. App metrics:
App metrics is another performance monitoring tool that makes application metrics easy for many services like database query performance and many. It is managed by IBM and can be installed with the Node package manager. 

Features of Appmetrics:

• It is a free and open-source tool.
• Provides better data transaction visualization of the application.
• Monitors network speed metrics of the running application.
• Provides query performance and garbage collection.

5. Prometheus:
Prometheus is a monitoring tool that is also a testing tool. It is a community-powered tool which makes it one of the most prominent open-source tools. It is not available by any package manager as it is need be configured manually.

Features of Prometheus:

• It provides better visualization of the application.
• It has many client libraries which makes the effort for developers less.
• It provides a better cloud-based application.
• It is an open-source tool.