golib/prometheus/webmetrics

WebMetrics - Prometheus Metrics for Gin Web Servers

A comprehensive collection of pre-configured Prometheus metrics specifically designed for monitoring Gin-based web servers. This package provides production-ready metrics for tracking request rates, latencies, errors, bandwidth, and more.

Table of Contents

• Overview
• Architecture
• Metrics Catalog
• Quick Start
• Detailed Usage
• Dashboard Examples
• Best Practices
• Performance Considerations

Overview

What is WebMetrics?

WebMetrics is a specialized metrics collection package that integrates seamlessly with Gin web framework and Prometheus. It provides:

• 11 production-ready metrics covering all aspects of HTTP server monitoring
• Zero-configuration defaults with customizable prefixes
• Label-based dimensionality for detailed analysis
• Efficient implementations using Bloom filters and optimized collectors
• Complete GoDoc documentation for all metrics

Key Features

✅ Traffic Monitoring: Track request volumes, unique clients, and bandwidth usage
✅ Performance Analysis: Measure latencies, identify slow endpoints
✅ Error Tracking: Monitor error rates, status codes, and failure patterns
✅ Resource Utilization: Track active connections and payload sizes
✅ Dashboard Ready: Includes PromQL queries for common visualizations

Architecture

How It Works

┌─────────────┐         ┌──────────────┐         ┌─────────────┐
│ Gin Request │────────▶│  Middleware  │────────▶│   Handler   │
└─────────────┘         └──────────────┘         └─────────────┘
                               │                         │
                               │                         │
                               ▼                         ▼
                        ┌──────────────┐         ┌──────────────┐
                        │   Metrics    │◀────────│  Collection  │
                        │   Context    │         │   Trigger    │
                        └──────────────┘         └──────────────┘
                               │
                               ▼
                        ┌──────────────┐
                        │  Prometheus  │
                        │   Registry   │
                        └──────────────┘

Collection Flow

1. Request Arrival: Gin middleware captures request start time
2. Context Enhancement: Request data stored in Gin context
3. Handler Execution: Your application logic runs
4. Metric Collection: Metrics are collected after handler completes
5. Prometheus Export: Metrics available at /metrics endpoint

Data Model

Each metric follows Prometheus best practices:

• Metric Name: {prefix}_{metric_name} (e.g., gin_request_total)
• Labels: Dimensional data for filtering and grouping
• Type: Counter, Gauge, or Histogram based on use case
• Description: Human-readable description of what is measured

Metrics Catalog

Overview Table

Metric	Type	Labels	Purpose	Cardinality
request_total	Counter	None	Total request count	Low (1)
request_uri_total	Counter	uri, method, code	Requests per endpoint	Medium
request_duration	Histogram	uri	Request latency distribution	Medium
request_slow_total	Histogram	uri, method, code	Slow requests tracking	Medium
request_errors_total	Counter	uri, method, code, error_type	Error tracking	Medium
request_body_total	Counter	None	Incoming data volume	Low (1)
response_body_total	Counter	None	Outgoing data volume	Low (1)
response_size_bytes	Histogram	uri, method	Response size distribution	Medium
request_ip_total	Counter	None	Unique client IPs	Low (1)
status_code_total	Counter	code, class	Status code distribution	Low (~50)
active_connections	Gauge	None	Current concurrent requests	Low (1)

Cardinality Guidelines

• Low: 1-100 unique label combinations
• Medium: 100-10,000 unique label combinations
• High: >10,000 unique label combinations (⚠️ avoid)

Quick Start

Basic Setup

package main

import (
    "github.com/gin-gonic/gin"
    "github.com/nabbar/golib/prometheus"
    "github.com/nabbar/golib/prometheus/webmetrics"
)

func main() {
    // Initialize Prometheus
    prm := prometheus.New(prometheus.Config{
        SlowTime: 5, // 5 seconds threshold for slow requests
    })
    
    // Get metric pool
    pool := prm.GetPool()
    
    // Register all standard metrics
    pool.Add(webmetrics.MetricRequestTotal("myapp"))
    pool.Add(webmetrics.MetricRequestURITotal("myapp"))
    pool.Add(webmetrics.MetricRequestLatency("myapp", func() prometheus.Prometheus { return prm }))
    pool.Add(webmetrics.MetricRequestErrors("myapp"))
    pool.Add(webmetrics.MetricStatusCodeTotal("myapp"))
    
    // Setup Gin
    router := gin.Default()
    
    // Add Prometheus middleware
    router.Use(prm.Middleware())
    
    // Expose metrics endpoint
    router.GET("/metrics", gin.WrapH(prm.Handler()))
    
    // Your routes
    router.GET("/api/users", handleUsers)
    
    router.Run(":8080")
}

Minimal Setup (Essential Metrics Only)

// Minimal monitoring setup with 4 key metrics
pool.Add(webmetrics.MetricRequestTotal("myapp"))           // Traffic volume
pool.Add(webmetrics.MetricRequestURITotal("myapp"))        // Per-endpoint traffic
pool.Add(webmetrics.MetricRequestErrors("myapp"))          // Error tracking
pool.Add(webmetrics.MetricStatusCodeTotal("myapp"))        // Status codes

Complete Setup (All Metrics)

// Comprehensive monitoring with all available metrics
func setupMetrics(prm prometheus.Prometheus, prefix string) {
    pool := prm.GetPool()
    
    getFct := func() prometheus.Prometheus { return prm }
    
    // Traffic metrics
    pool.Add(webmetrics.MetricRequestTotal(prefix))
    pool.Add(webmetrics.MetricRequestURITotal(prefix))
    pool.Add(webmetrics.MetricRequestIPTotal(prefix))
    
    // Performance metrics
    pool.Add(webmetrics.MetricRequestLatency(prefix, getFct))
    pool.Add(webmetrics.MetricRequestSlow(prefix, getFct))
    
    // Error metrics
    pool.Add(webmetrics.MetricRequestErrors(prefix))
    pool.Add(webmetrics.MetricStatusCodeTotal(prefix))
    
    // Resource metrics
    pool.Add(webmetrics.MetricRequestBody(prefix))
    pool.Add(webmetrics.MetricResponseBody(prefix))
    pool.Add(webmetrics.MetricResponseSizeByEndpoint(prefix, getFct))
    
    // Connection metrics (requires special middleware)
    activeConns := webmetrics.MetricActiveConnections(prefix)
    pool.Add(activeConns)
    
    // Note: Active connections requires custom middleware
    // See "Active Connections Middleware" section below
}

Detailed Usage

Active Connections Middleware

The active_connections metric requires special handling:

func setupActiveConnectionsMiddleware(metric prmmet.Metric) gin.HandlerFunc {
    return func(c *gin.Context) {
        // Increment on request start
        metric.Inc(nil)
        
        // Decrement on request end (using defer)
        defer metric.Dec(nil)
        
        // Process request
        c.Next()
    }
}

// Usage
activeConns := webmetrics.MetricActiveConnections("myapp")
pool.Add(activeConns)
router.Use(setupActiveConnectionsMiddleware(activeConns))

Custom Metric Prefixes

Use custom prefixes to distinguish between multiple services:

// Service A
setupMetrics(prmA, "service_a")  // → service_a_request_total

// Service B  
setupMetrics(prmB, "service_b")  // → service_b_request_total

// Default (uses "gin" prefix)
setupMetrics(prm, "")            // → gin_request_total

Filtering by Labels

Metrics with labels support filtering in Prometheus:

// Example: request_uri_total has labels: uri, method, code

// All POST requests
gin_request_uri_total{method="POST"}

// All 404 errors
gin_request_uri_total{code="404"}

// Specific endpoint
gin_request_uri_total{uri="/api/users/:id"}

// Combination
gin_request_uri_total{uri="/api/orders", method="POST", code="201"}

Dashboard Examples

Traffic Overview Dashboard

# Total Request Rate (req/sec)
rate(gin_request_total[5m])

# Request Rate by Endpoint
sum by(uri) (rate(gin_request_uri_total[5m]))

# Top 10 Busiest Endpoints
topk(10, sum by(uri) (rate(gin_request_uri_total[5m])))

# Request Distribution by HTTP Method
sum by(method) (rate(gin_request_uri_total[5m]))

Performance Dashboard

# Average Request Latency
rate(gin_request_duration_sum[5m]) / rate(gin_request_duration_count[5m])

# 95th Percentile Latency by Endpoint
histogram_quantile(0.95, sum by(uri, le) (rate(gin_request_duration_bucket[5m])))

# 99th Percentile Latency (Tail Latency)
histogram_quantile(0.99, sum by(uri, le) (rate(gin_request_duration_bucket[5m])))

# Slowest Endpoints (p99 latency)
topk(5, histogram_quantile(0.99, sum by(uri, le) (rate(gin_request_duration_bucket[5m]))))

# Slow Request Rate
sum(rate(gin_request_slow_total_count[5m]))

# Percentage of Slow Requests
sum(rate(gin_request_slow_total_count[5m])) / sum(rate(gin_request_total[5m])) * 100

Error Monitoring Dashboard

# Total Error Rate
sum(rate(gin_request_errors_total[5m]))

# Error Rate by Type (Client vs Server)
sum by(error_type) (rate(gin_request_errors_total[5m]))

# 4xx Error Rate
sum(rate(gin_request_errors_total{error_type="client_error"}[5m]))

# 5xx Error Rate
sum(rate(gin_request_errors_total{error_type="server_error"}[5m]))

# Error Percentage
sum(rate(gin_request_errors_total[5m])) / sum(rate(gin_request_total[5m])) * 100

# Top 5 Endpoints with Most Errors
topk(5, sum by(uri) (rate(gin_request_errors_total[5m])))

# Most Common Error Codes
topk(10, sum by(code) (rate(gin_status_code_total{class=~"4xx|5xx"}[5m])))

Success Rate & Availability

# Success Rate (2xx responses)
sum(rate(gin_status_code_total{class="2xx"}[5m])) / sum(rate(gin_status_code_total[5m])) * 100

# Availability (non-5xx responses)
(sum(rate(gin_status_code_total[5m])) - sum(rate(gin_status_code_total{class="5xx"}[5m]))) / 
sum(rate(gin_status_code_total[5m])) * 100

# SLO Compliance (99.9% target)
(sum(rate(gin_request_total[30d])) - sum(rate(gin_request_errors_total[30d]))) / 
sum(rate(gin_request_total[30d])) >= 0.999

Bandwidth & Resource Usage

# Incoming Bandwidth (MB/s)
rate(gin_request_body_total[5m]) / 1024 / 1024

# Outgoing Bandwidth (MB/s)
rate(gin_response_body_total[5m]) / 1024 / 1024

# Total Bandwidth (MB/s)
(rate(gin_request_body_total[5m]) + rate(gin_response_body_total[5m])) / 1024 / 1024

# Average Request Size (bytes)
rate(gin_request_body_total[5m]) / rate(gin_request_total[5m])

# Average Response Size (bytes)
rate(gin_response_body_total[5m]) / rate(gin_request_total[5m])

# Average Response Size by Endpoint
rate(gin_response_size_bytes_sum[5m]) / rate(gin_response_size_bytes_count[5m])

# Current Active Connections
gin_active_connections

# Peak Active Connections (last hour)
max_over_time(gin_active_connections[1h])

Client Tracking

# Approximate Unique Clients
gin_request_ip_total

# New Unique IPs per Hour
rate(gin_request_ip_total[1h])

# Average Requests per Unique IP
rate(gin_request_total[5m]) / rate(gin_request_ip_total[5m])

Best Practices

1. Choose Appropriate Metric Types

• Counter: For cumulative values that only increase (requests, errors, bytes)
• Gauge: For values that go up and down (active connections, queue size)
• Histogram: For distributions (latency, response size)

2. Manage Cardinality

⚠️ High cardinality can impact Prometheus performance

Good (Low cardinality):

// Uses route pattern: /users/:id
uri = c.FullPath()  // → "/users/:id"

Bad (High cardinality):

// Uses actual path with ID
uri = c.Request.URL.Path  // → "/users/123", "/users/456", ...
// This creates thousands of unique label combinations!

3. Use Metric Naming Conventions

Follow Prometheus naming best practices:

• Use _total suffix for counters: request_total, errors_total
• Use base units: _bytes, _seconds
• Use _duration for latencies
• Avoid redundant prefixes: gin_gin_request ❌

4. Set Up Alerts

Example alert rules:

groups:
  - name: webserver_alerts
    rules:
      # High error rate
      - alert: HighErrorRate
        expr: |
          sum(rate(gin_request_errors_total[5m])) / 
          sum(rate(gin_request_total[5m])) > 0.05
        for: 5m
        annotations:
          summary: "Error rate above 5%"
      
      # High latency
      - alert: HighLatency
        expr: |
          histogram_quantile(0.99, 
            sum by(le) (rate(gin_request_duration_bucket[5m]))
          ) > 2
        for: 10m
        annotations:
          summary: "P99 latency above 2 seconds"
      
      # Service down
      - alert: ServiceDown
        expr: up{job="myapp"} == 0
        for: 1m
        annotations:
          summary: "Service is down"

5. Dashboard Organization

Organize dashboards by audience:

Operations Dashboard:

• Request rate
• Error rate
• Latency percentiles
• Active connections

Development Dashboard:

• Endpoint performance
• Error breakdown
• Slow queries
• Resource usage

Business Dashboard:

• Traffic trends
• Availability SLA
• User growth (unique IPs)
• Geographic distribution

6. Retention and Aggregation

Configure appropriate retention in Prometheus:

# prometheus.yml
global:
  scrape_interval: 15s
  
# Short-term high-resolution data
storage:
  tsdb:
    retention.time: 15d
    
# Long-term aggregated data (using recording rules)
rule_files:
  - recording_rules.yml

Example recording rules:

groups:
  - name: aggregate_metrics
    interval: 5m
    rules:
      # Pre-aggregate common queries
      - record: job:gin_request_rate:5m
        expr: sum(rate(gin_request_total[5m]))
      
      - record: job:gin_error_rate:5m
        expr: sum(rate(gin_request_errors_total[5m]))
      
      - record: job:gin_latency_p95:5m
        expr: histogram_quantile(0.95, sum by(le) (rate(gin_request_duration_bucket[5m])))

Performance Considerations

Memory Usage

Each metric instance consumes memory:

• Counter/Gauge: ~200 bytes + (labels * 50 bytes)
• Histogram: ~2KB + (buckets * labels * 100 bytes)

Example calculation for 100 endpoints:

• request_uri_total (3 labels, ~20 status codes, ~5 methods): ~10KB
• request_duration (1 label, 10 buckets): ~100KB
• Total for all metrics: ~500KB - 2MB

CPU Impact

Metric collection overhead:

• Counter increment: ~50ns
• Histogram observe: ~200ns
• Label lookup: ~100ns

For 1000 req/s: ~0.5-1% CPU overhead

Optimization Tips

1. Limit histogram buckets: Use 8-12 buckets maximum
2. Reduce label cardinality: Avoid user IDs, timestamps in labels
3. Use recording rules: Pre-aggregate common queries
4. Efficient Bloom filters: For unique IP tracking
5. Batch metrics scraping: Default 15s interval is sufficient

Troubleshooting

High Memory Usage

Symptom: Prometheus memory grows continuously

Solution:

1. Check label cardinality: promtool tsdb analyze /data/prometheus
2. Remove high-cardinality labels
3. Use recording rules to aggregate data
4. Reduce retention period

Missing Metrics

Symptom: Metrics not appearing in Prometheus

Checklist:

• ✅ Metric registered with pool: pool.Add(metric)
• ✅ Middleware configured: router.Use(prm.Middleware())
• ✅ Metrics endpoint exposed: router.GET("/metrics", ...)
• ✅ Prometheus scraping configured
• ✅ Check Prometheus targets page

Inaccurate Latency

Symptom: Latency metrics seem wrong

Solution:

• Ensure middleware sets start time in context
• Check librtr.GinContextStartUnixNanoTime is set
• Verify time synchronization (NTP)

License

MIT License - see LICENSE file for details.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please ensure:

• GoDoc documentation for new metrics
• Examples in README
• Follow existing naming conventions
• Include dashboard query examples

Support

• Documentation: pkg.go.dev
• Issues: GitHub Issues

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