@gitterhq/env

gitter-env

Deploying your node app? Use this to:

• stop your app from crashing when redis fails over
• keep servers alive by rotating logs
• publish errors that wake people up in the night
• publish stats that help make decisions
• use different env configs so that you app can travel to new environments

Using gitter-env

Firstly you need to create a singleton instance inside your application. Call the module something like env. It will need to reference the location of the configuration files, like this:

var gitterEnv = require('gitter-env');
var path = require('path');

/* Create a singleton environment */
module.exports = gitterEnv.create(path.join(__dirname, '..', '..', 'config'));

Once you've got your env instance, here are some things you can do with it

Logging

env.logger looks a lot like winston. Use it for logging:

• logger.verbose(message, meta)
• logger.info(message, meta)
• logger.warn(message, meta)
• logger.error(message, meta)

Configuration

env.conf looks a lot like nconf. Use it for configuration:

• conf.get('some:variable')

Error Reporter

env.errorReporter will send your errors to sentry. Use it for logging serious problems:

• errorReporter(err, { some: 'meta', information: 1 })

Redis Client

env.redis will provide you with a singleton instance of a redis client or a new instance. It will use Redis Sentinel it it's configured.

Example configuration:

{
  "redisDb": 1,
  "sentinel": {
    "master-name": "test-master",
    "hosts": ["localhost:46379"]
  },
  clientOpts: {
    "return_buffers": true
  }
}

• env.redis.getClient() - returns the main singleton Redis client.
• env.redis.createClient([options]) - returns a new Redis client. Uses redis config by default.
• env.redis.quitClient() - closes a Redis client (don't do this with the main singleton client)

Statistics

env.stats will send statistics to Datadog, Cube, and other places.

• env.stats.event('name') - increment a counter
• env.stats.eventHF('name', [count], [frequency]) - increment a high frequency counter
• env.stats.gaugeHF('name', [value], [frequency]) - update a high frequency gauge
• env.stats.responseTime('name', duration) - track a response time

Error Handling

• env.installUncaughtExceptionHandler - will install a graceful shutdown handler on uncaught exceptions
• env.domainWrap(function() { /* server */ }); - will do the same inside the function

Middlewares

• env.middlewares.errorHandler - a basic error handling middleware
• env.middlewares.accessLogger - access logging with response time stats