Support knex/thenables

[JaneJeon]

Hi, I googled this but was unable to find any reference to this.

Currently, knex.js (which is a heavily used/depended-on library in the nodejs space) basically “slurps up” .then() chains, which means it removes reference to the original stack trace on every async call. This is a well-known issue, and both datadog and elastic-apm have specifically built workarounds for this:

https://github.com/DataDog/dd-trace-js/blob/master/packages/datadog-plugin-knex/src/index.js

https://github.com/elastic/apm-agent-nodejs/blob/master/lib/instrumentation/modules/knex.js

However, it does not seem like newrelic’s agent takes care of scenarios like this where the stack trace is lost through async calls (I believe it’s not only knex, but a couple of other libraries that have this behaviour as well - for example, I’ve heard that apollo-server also has a similar behaviour with async stack traces).

Currently, this would be a hard blocker for any production application utilizing knex.js directly or even indirectly to adopt newrelic’s APM. I don’t know if a fix for this is already implemented, but if not, I would request that newrelic’s APM implement it as well.

Thanks!

Related issues:
elastic/apm-agent-nodejs#873
DataDog/dd-trace-js#563

[carlo-808]

Hi @JaneJeon ! Thank you for the request and the really thorough description of a possible workaround. I will bring this up with our Product Manager and we'll get this prioritized. If you're feeling ambitious, PRs are welcome to add this functionality. Thanks again!

[JaneJeon]

Hi, any update on this? It is a hard blocker for not just me, but anyone using knex (or any library that uses its own promise implementation, which is a surprising number of them).

[michaelgoin]

Hi @JaneJeon,

We do not yet have this scheduled on our roadmap. I know at least a few customers have asked for knex support so this will be balanced with those requests as the PM makes roadmap decisions. I'll go ahead and make them re-aware of this issue, too.

Thank you,

Michael

[taylorlapeyre]

Another +1! Having 0 visibility into queries in new relic just because of Knex is really a kick in the shin

[garbados]

A user reported a workaround:

if we add an asCallback call to the query seems to make the built in pg instrumentation work through knex.

const results = await knexQuery.asCallback(() => {})

When we do this with our knex queries newrelic starts to record the database queries fine.

[dwjohnston]

For posterity, the asCallback solution didn't work for me.

Original code:

   await this.knexConnection(this.table).insert([newWorkflow]);
   return this.getById(workflowId);

Attempt one:

    const promise = new Promise((res, rej) => {

      this.knexConnection(this.table).insert([newWorkflow]).asCallback((err, rows) => {
        if (err) {
          rej(err);
        }

        else {

          this.getById(workflowId).then((result) => {
            res(result);
          }).catch((err) => {
            rej(err);
          })
    
        }
      });


    });
    
    return promise; 
    

Attempt two:

    await this.knexConnection(this.table).insert([newWorkflow]).asCallback(() => {}); 
    return this.getById(workflowId);

[robertoandrade]

Is it even worth voting on this FR anymore? https://discuss.newrelic.com/t/feature-idea-knex-support-in-nodejs-client/67212/7

[robertoandrade]

I'm considering as an alternative, ditching the newrelic node agent altogether and leveraging opentelemetry.io and its flexible and extensive list of instrumentation plugins (knex included: https://www.npmjs.com/package/@opentelemetry/instrumentation-knex) and configure it with a newrelic exporter to send that to newrelic for analysis. Perhaps others would want to check that out too.

[JaneJeon]

@robertoandrade For what it's worth, I've simply switched over to ddog. I couldn't wait a year+ for this basic feature.

[pbeckerproaxiom]

We started using https://vincit.github.io/objection.js/ which uses Knex underneath, so we are running into this problem now as well. I'd be happy to lend a hand as needed, but I don't have much experience in the Node.js world.

[renatobenks]

I'm having this same problem in datadog as well, just to other people know that too.

[workato-integration]

https://new-relic.atlassian.net/browse/NR-292126