Monitor AWS API Gateway

Overview

The APIGateway plugin of SnappyFlow collects detailed metrics of AWS APIGateway, such as API call volume, request fulfillment, errors, and latency counts. The collected information is visualized on the SnappyFlow dashboard, making it easy for you to understand and troubleshoot your APIs.

Prerequisite

To collect metrics from API Gateway, it is necessary to have an IAM Role with CloudWatch access and sfPoller set up within your AWS environment. Click here to learn more about setting up sfPoller in your AWS environment.

Create a Policy to Access API Gateway

1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the IAM console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/iam/.

2. Follow the below steps to create a policy in the IAM console.

   • Navigate to Access Management > Policies

   • In the Create policy window, go to the JSON tab

   • Copy and paste the below-mentioned JSON code into the policy editor

      {
        "Version": "2012-10-17",
        "Statement": [
            {
              "Sid": "VisualEditor0",
              "Effect": "Allow",
              "Action": [
                         "apigateway:GET",  
                         "apigateway:GET_RESOURCE", 
                         "apigateway:GET_STAGE", 
                         "apigateway:UPDATE_STAGE" ,
                         ],
              },
          ],
      }

   • Click the Next: Tags > Next: Review button

   • In the Review policy window, give the Name and Description (Optional) for the policy and review the list of permissions

   • Click the Create policy button

   • Attach the policy to a dedicated IAM Role for read-only access

Configure sfPoller to Collect Metrics

Follow the below step to add endpoints and plugins in sfPoller.

1. Go to the Application tab of sfPoller and navigate to your Project > Application.

2. Select the Application, it will take you to the Endpoint page.

   

3. In the Endpoint page, select the Add Endpoint button, add the following data, and save.

   • Service Type: Select AWS Service
   • Account Name: aws
   • Endpoint Type: APIGateway
   • Name: Give a meaningful name to the endpoint
   • API Type: Select an API type (REST, HTTP, WebSocket)
   • Instance Name: Give the API ID as instance name
   

4. In the Plugins window, select the +Add button.

5. In the Add Plugin window, select the below details and save.

   • Plugin Type: Metric
   • Plugin: cloudwatch-apigateway
   • Enable Detailed CloudWatch Metrics (incurs additional costs): By default, the status is Disabled, enable if required
   • Stage Name: Give a stage name

note

Monitor stage-specific metrics by specifying the desired stage name. If a stage name is not necessary, you can leave it empty. In case you forget to provide a stage name or left it empty intentionally, you will receive basic API metrics. For monitoring multiple stages, simply input the stage names separated by comma. To monitor all stages of a particular API, enter "all" as the input.

• Interval: Choose an interval value. The minimum value for the interval is 300

• Status: By default, the status is Enabled

  
  

6. Click the global Save button in the window's top right corner to save all the changes made so far.

Additional Metrics

To view additional metrics follow the below steps:

1. Firstly, enable additional metrics in AWS. Then call the stage:update action of the Amazon API Gateway - REST API and update the metricsEnabled property to true. Click here to learn about how to call Update Stage function.
2. While adding the cloudwatch-apigateway plugin enable the Enable Detailed CloudWatch Metrics option.

View API Gateway Metrics

Follow the below steps to view the metrics collected from AWS APIGateway.

1. Go to the Application tab in SnappyFlow and navigate to your Project > Application > Dashboard.
   

   
   

2. You can view the APIGateway metrics in the Metrics section.

note

Once plugin is added to sfPoller, they will be automatically detected within the Metrics section. However, if the plugins are not detected, you can import template to view the corresponding metrics.

3. To access the unprocessed data gathered from the plugins, navigate to the Browse data section and choose the Index: Metric, Instance: Endpoint, Plugin, and Document Type.

Template Details

Template	Plugin	Document Type	Description
APIGateway	cloudwatch-apigateway	apigatewayHttpApistats, apigatewayRestApiStats, apigatewayWebSocketApiStats	Collects metrics from APIGateway for a diverse range of API types, including HTTP API, REST API, and WebSocket API.

Metric List

REST API and HTTP API

Metric	Description
4XXError	The number of errors captured from the client side.
Count	The number of calls to an API method.
5XXError	The number of errors captured from the server side.
CacheHitCount	The number of requests served from the API cache.
CacheMissCount	The number of requests served from the back end when API caching is enabled.
average IntegrationLatency	The duration from a request sent from API Gateway to the back end and response received by APIGateway from the back end. The time is calculated milliseconds.
average Latency	The duration from a request sent from API Gateway to the back end and response received by APIGateway from the back end. The time is calculated milliseconds. The latency includes the integration latency and other API Gateway overhead.
Dataprocessed	The amount of data processed in bytes.

WebSocket API

Metric	Description
ConnectCount	The number of messages sent to the  connect route integration.
MessageCount	The number of messages sent to the WebSocket API, either from or to the client.
IntegrationError	The number of requests that return 5XX response from the integration.
ClientError	The number of requests that have a 4XX response returned by API Gateway before the integration is invoked.
ExecutionError	Errors that occurred when calling the integration.