Using the metrics API

This page applies to Apigee and Apigee hybrid.

View Apigee Edge documentation.

Apigee records a wide variety of operational and business data that flows across APIs. The metrics derived from this data are useful for operational monitoring and business monitoring. Using Apigee Analytics, you can, for example, determine which APIs are performing well or poorly, which developers are delivering the highest value traffic, and which apps are causing the most issues for your backend services.

To help access this metrics data easily, use the metrics API when you need to automate certain analytics functions, such as retrieving metrics periodically using an automation client or script. You can also use the API to build your own visualizations in the form of custom widgets that you can embed in portals or custom apps.

To learn how to use Analytics in the Apigee UI see Apigee Analytics overview.

About the metrics API

There are two ways you can use the metrics API:

  • Get metrics for an organization and environment over a period of time, such as an hour, day, or week. This method returns raw metrics for the entire organization and environment.

    For example, for the previous week you want to obtain:

    • Number of policy errors
    • Average response time
    • Total traffic

  • Get metrics organized by dimension over a period of time for an organization and environment.

    For example, for the previous week you can use dimensions to group metrics by API product, API proxy, and developer email (which can also be an AppGroup Id) to obtain:

    • Number of policy errors per API product
    • Average response time per API proxy
    • Total traffic per developer email

    To manage the result returned, the metrics API supports the following features:

    For more information, see the metrics API reference.

    Getting started using the metrics API

    The request URL for the metrics API is:

    https://apigee.googleapis.com/v1/organizations/$ORG/environments/$ENV/stats[dimension]

    For example, to get metrics grouped by API proxy, use the following URL to call the Apigee API:

    https://apigee.googleapis.com/v1/organizations/$ORG/environments/$ENV/stats/apiproxy?timeRange=07/21/2018+00:00:00~08/23/2018+00:00:00

    Omit the dimension to return raw metrics for the entire organization and environment for the specified time period:

    https://apigee.googleapis.com/v1/organizations/$ORG/environments/$ENV/stats?timeRange=07/21/2019+00:00:00~08/23/2018+00:00:00

    Specifying the metrics to return

    Use the select query parameter to specify the metrics to retrieve, and an optional aggregation function, in the form:

    ?select=metric

    or:

    ?select=aggFunction(metric)

    Where:

    • metric specifies the data you want to return. For example, the number of API requests, cache hits, or policy errors. See metrics for a table that specifies the metric name to use with the select query parameter.

    • aggFunction specifies the optional aggregation function run against the metric. For example, you can use the following aggregation functions with the processing latency metric:

      • avg: Returns the average processing latency.
      • min: Returns the minimum processing latency.
      • max: Returns the maximum processing latency.
      • sum: Returns the sum of all processing latencies.
      • p50: Returns the 50th percentile for processing latencies.
      • p95: Returns the 95th percentile for processing latencies.
      • p99: Returns the 99th percentile for processing latencies.

      Not all metrics support all aggregation functions. The documentation on metrics contains a table that specifies the metric name and the function (sum, avg, min, max) supported by the metric.

    For example, to return the average number of transactions, meaning API proxy requests, per second: 

    ?select=tps

    Notice that this example does not require an aggregation function. The next example uses an aggregation function to return the sum of cache hits:

    ?select=sum(cache_hit)

    You can returns multiple metrics for a single API call. To get metrics for the sum of policy errors and the average request size, set the select query param using a comma-separated list of metrics:

    ?select=sum(policy_error),avg(request_size)

    Specifying the time period

    The metrics API return data for a specified period of time. Use the timeRange (6 months max) query parameter to specify the time period, in the form:

    ?timeRange=MM/DD/YYYY%20HH:MM~MM/DD/YYYY%20HH:MM

    Notice the %20 before HH:MM. The timeRange parameter requires a URL-encoded space character before HH:MM, or a + character, as in: MM/DD/YYYY+HH:MM~MM/DD/YYYY+HH:MM.

    For example:

    ?timeRange=03/01/2018%2000:00~03/30/2018%2023:59

    Do not use 24:00 as the time because it wraps around to 00:00. Use 23:59 instead.

    Examples of calling the metrics API

    This section provides examples using the metrics API. See Metrics API examples for additional examples.

    Return the total number of calls made to your APIs for one month

    To return the total number of calls made to all APIs in your organization and environment for one month, use a call similar to the following:

    curl -v "https://apigee.googleapis.com/v1/organizations/$ORG/environments/$ENV/stats/?select=sum(message_count)&timeRange=03/01/2018%2000:00~03/31/2018%2023:59" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN"

    Where $TOKEN is set to your OAuth 2.0 access token, as described in Obtaining an OAuth 2.0 access token. For information about the curl options used in this example, see Using curl. For a description of the environment variables used, see Setting environment variables for Apigee API requests.

    The following provides an example of the response:

    {
  "environments": [
    {
      "metrics": [
        {
          "name": "sum(message_count)",
          "values": [
            "7.44944088E8"
          ]
        }
      ],
      "name": "prod"
    }
  ],
...
}

    Return the total message count per API proxy for two days

    In this example, you return metrics for the number of requests received by all API proxies over a two-day period. The select query param defines the aggregate function sum for the metric message_count on the dimension apiproxy. The report returns the request message throughput for all APIs for traffic received between the beginning of 6/20/2018 and the end of 6/21/2018, in UTC time:

    curl  https://apigee.googleapis.com/v1/organizations/$ORG/environments/$ENV/stats/apiproxy?"select=sum(message_count)&timeRange=06/20/2018%2000:00~06/21/2018%2023:59" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN"

    Where $TOKEN is set to your OAuth 2.0 access token, as described in Obtaining an OAuth 2.0 access token. For information about the curl options used in this example, see Using curl. For a description of the environment variables used, see Setting environment variables for Apigee API requests.

    The following provides an example of the response:

    {
  "environments" : [ {
    "dimensions" : [ {
      "metrics" : [ {
        "name" : "sum(message_count)",
        "values" : [ {
          "timestamp" : 1498003200000,
          "value" : "1100.0"
        } ]
      } ],
      "name" : "target-reroute"
    } ],
    "name" : "test"
  } ]...
}

    This response indicates that 1100 message were received by one API proxy called 'target-reroute' running in the test environment between the start of 6/20/2018 and the end of 6/21/2018.

    To get metrics for other dimensions, specify a different dimension as the URI parameter. For example, you can specify the developer_app dimension to retrieve metrics for developer apps. The following API call returns the total throughput (messages received) from any apps for the specified time interval:

    curl  https://apigee.googleapis.com/v1/organizations/$ORG/environments/$ENV/stats/developer_app?"select=sum(message_count)&timeRange=06/20/2018%2000:00~06/21/2018%2023:59&timeUnit=day" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN"

    The following provides an example of the response:

    {
  "environments": [
    {
      "dimensions": [
        {
          "metrics": [
            {
              "name": "sum(message_count)",
              "values": [
                {
                  "timestamp": 1498003200000,
                  "value": "886.0"
                }
              ]
            }
          ],
          "name": "Test-App"
        },
        {
          "metrics": [
            {
              "name": "sum(message_count)",
              "values": [
                {
                  "timestamp": 1498003200000,
                  "value": "6645.0"
                }
              ]
            }
          ],
          "name": "johndoe_app"
        },
        {
          "metrics": [
            {
              "name": "sum(message_count)",
              "values": [
                {
                  "timestamp": 1498003200000,
                  "value": "1109.0"
                }
              ]
            }
          ],
          "name": "marys_app"
        }
  ]...
}

    Sorting results by relative ranking

    Many times when getting metrics, you only want to get results for a subset of the total set of data. Usually, you need to get the results for the "top 10", for example, the "top 10 slowest APIs", the "top 10 most active apps". You can do this using the topk query parameter as part of the request.

    For example you may be interested to know who your top developers are, measured by throughput, or what your worst performers (i.e., 'top slowest') target APIs are by latency.

    The topk (meaning 'top k' entities) enables reporting on the entities associated with the highest value for a given metric. This enables you to filter metrics for a list of entities that exemplify a particular condition.

    For example, to find which target URL was the most error prone over the last week, the topk parameter is appended to the request, with a value of 1:

    curl https://apigee.googleapis.com/v1/organizations/$ORG/environments/$ENV/stats/target_url?"select=sum(is_error)&timeRange=05/08/2018%2000:00~05/15/2018%2000:00&timeUnit=week&sortby=sum(is_error)&topk=1" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN"

    Where $TOKEN is set to your OAuth 2.0 access token, as described in Obtaining an OAuth 2.0 access token. For information about the curl options used in this example, see Using curl. For a description of the environment variables used, see Setting environment variables for Apigee API requests.

    The following provides an example of the response:

    {
  "environments": [
    {
      "dimensions": [
        {
          "metrics": [
            {
              "name": "sum(is_error)",
              "values": [
                {
                  "timestamp": 1494201600000,
                  "value": "12077.0"
                }
              ]
            }
          ],
          "name": "http://api.company.com"
        }
      ]...
}

    The result of this request is a set of metrics that shows that the buggiest target URL is http://api.company.com.

    You can also use the topk parameter to sort for the APIs experiencing the highest throughput. The following example retrieves metrics on the top ranked API, defined by highest throughput in the last week:

    curl https://apigee.googleapis.com/v1/organizations/$ORG/environments/$ENV}/stats/apiproxy?"select=sum(message_count)&timeRange=05/08/2018%2000:00~05/15/2018%2000:00&timeUnit=day&sortby=sum(message_count)&sort=DESC&topk=1" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN"

    The following provides an example of the response:

    {
  "environments": [
    {
      "dimensions": [
        {
          "metrics": [
            {
              "name": "sum(message_count)",
              "values": [
                {
                  "timestamp": 1494720000000,
                  "value": "5750.0"
                },
                {
                  "timestamp": 1494633600000,
                  "value": "5752.0"
                },
                {
                  "timestamp": 1494547200000,
                  "value": "5747.0"
                },
                {
                  "timestamp": 1494460800000,
                  "value": "5751.0"
                },
                {
                  "timestamp": 1494374400000,
                  "value": "5753.0"
                },
                {
                  "timestamp": 1494288000000,
                  "value": "5751.0"
                },
                {
                  "timestamp": 1494201600000,
                  "value": "5752.0"
                }
              ]
            }
          ],
          "name": "testCache"
        }
      ],
      "name": "test"
    }
  ]...
}

    Filtering results

    For greater granularity, you can filter results to limit the data returned. When using filters, you must use dimensions as filter properties.

    For example, let's suppose that you need to retrieve a count of errors from backend services filtered by the HTTP verb of the request. Your goal is find out how many POST and PUT requests are generating errors per backend service. To do so, you use the dimension target_url along with the filter request_verb:

    curl https://apigee.googleapis.com/v1/organizations/$ORG/environments/$ENV/stats/target_url?"select=sum(is_error)&timeRange=05/08/2018%2000:00~05/15/2018%2000:00&timeUnit=week&filter=(request_verb%20in%20'POST','PUT')" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN"

    Where $TOKEN is set to your OAuth 2.0 access token, as described in Obtaining an OAuth 2.0 access token. For information about the curl options used in this example, see Using curl. For a description of the environment variables used, see Setting environment variables for Apigee API requests.

    The following provides an example of the response:

    {
  "environments" : [
    {
      "dimensions" : [
        {
          "metrics" : [
            {
              "name" : "sum(is_error)",
              "values" : [
                {
                  "timestamp" : 1519516800000,
                  "value" : "1.0"
                }
              ]
          }
        ],
        "name" : "testCache"
        }
      ],
      "name" : "test"
    }
  ]...
}

    Paginating results

    In production environments, some request to the Apigee analytics API return very large data sets. To make it easy to display large data sets in the context of a UI-based application, the API natively supports pagination.

    To paginate results, use the offset and limit query parameters, along with the sortby sorting parameter to ensure a consistent ordering of items.

    For example, the following request would be likely to return a large data set, since it retrieves metrics for all errors on all APIs in the product environment for the last week.

    curl https://apigee.googleapis.com/v1/organizations/$ORG/environments/$ENV/stats/apiproxy?"select=sum(is_error)&timeRange=05/08/2018%2000:00~05/15/2018%2000:00&timeUnit=week&sortby=sum(is_error)" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN"

    Where $TOKEN is set to your OAuth 2.0 access token, as described in Obtaining an OAuth 2.0 access token. For information about the curl options used in this example, see Using curl. For a description of the environment variables used, see Setting environment variables for Apigee API requests.

    If your UI-based application can reasonably display 50 results per page, you can set the limit to 50. Since 0 counts as the first item, the following call returns items 0-49 in descending order (sort=DESC is the default).

    curl https://apigee.googleapis.com/v1/organizations/$ORG/environments/$ENV/stats/apiproxy?"select=sum(is_error)&timeRange=05/08/2018%2000:00~05/15/2018%2000:00&timeUnit=week&sortby=sum(is_error)&limit=50&offset=0" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN"

    For the second 'page' of results, use the offset query parameter, as follows. Note that the limit and offset are identical. That's because 0 counts as the first item. With a limit of 50 and an offset of 0, items 0-49 are returned. With an offset of 50, items 50-99 are returned.

    curl https://apigee.googleapis.com/v1/organizations/$ORG/environments/$ENV/stats/apiproxy?"select=sum(is_error)&timeRange=05/08/2018%2000:00~05/15/2018%2000:00&timeUnit=week&sortby=sum(is_error)&limit=50&offset=50" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN"