marlowe

Description

marlowe provides a correlation id header for Rails and Rack applications to correlate logs for a single request across multiple services.

Install

You can install it as a gem:

$ gem install marlowe

or add it into a Gemfile:

gem 'marlowe'

Configuration

There is no configuration as of yet. Future plans include configuring the name of the correlation id header.

Accesing the Correlation ID

The correlation id can be accessed throughout the application by accessing the RequestStore storage.

RequestStore[:correlation_id]

Logging

For a rails application, you simply need to change the log formatter to one of the provided ones. Correlated versions of both the SimpleFormatter and Formatter are included.

# config/environments/development.rb
Rails.application.configure do
  config.log_formatter = CorrelatedSimpleFormatter.new
end

To create your own formatter, you’ll need to access the RequestStore storage. You can use this pattern if you’ve rolled your own logger/formatter:

# lib/correlated_formatter.rb
require 'request_store'

class CorrelatedSimpleFormatter < ActiveSupport::Logger::SimpleFormatter
  def call(severity, timestamp, progname, msg)
    "[#{RequestStore.store[:correlation_id]}] #{super}"
  end
end

Clients

Catching and creating the correlation ID is a great all on its own, but to really take advantage of the correlation in a service based architecture you’ll need to pass the id to the next service in the change.

Here’s an example of a Hurley client:

# lib/correlated_client.rb

require 'hurley'
require 'request_store'

class Hurley::CorrelatedClient < Hurley::Client
  def initialize(*args, &block)
    super
    header['Correlation-Id'] = ::RequestStore.store[:correlation_id]
  end
end

If you have long-lived Hurley clients, it is also possible to use the Hurley callback machanism to add the outgoing headers:

client.before_call do |request|
  request.header['Correlation-Id'] = ::RequestStore.store[:correlation_id]
end

or

class Correlator
  def name
    :correlator
  end

  def call(request)
    request.header['Correlation-Id'] = ::RequestStore.store[:correlation_id]
  end
end

client.before_call(Correlator.new)