New Relic APM for Node.js

Host metrics vs APM

Infrastructure monitoring shows the machine. APM shows the process — transactions, throughput, errors, and (with setup) application logs.

By default you may see host / nginx-style logs — not your app’s own logs — until application logging is enabled (next lesson).

Set up Node.js APM

In New Relic: add a data source → Node.js → install on the host.

npm install newrelic express

package.json script

{
  "scripts": {
    "start": "NEW_RELIC_APP_NAME=test NEW_RELIC_LICENSE_KEY=YOUR_LICENSE_KEY node -r newrelic index.js"
  }
}

Or require the agent first in code (agent must load before Express):

require("newrelic");
const express = require("express");
const app = express();
 
app.get("/", (req, res) => {
  console.log("route hit");
  res.json({ message: "hi there" });
});
 
app.listen(3000, () => {
  console.log("listening on port 3000");
});

npm start

Generate traffic

npm i -g loadtest
loadtest -c 10 --rps 200 http://localhost:3000/

Open the APM dashboard for your app — transactions, response time, throughput.