How to Monitor App Router Next.js Applications with New Relic

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Next.js is a powerful JavaScript framework that offers optimized speed and performance for both development and runtime. With the release of Next.js 13, the App Router has become the recommended way to handle routing in Next.js applications. This new router leverages React’s latest features, such as Server Components and Streaming, to offer a more modern and efficient approach to building web applications.

In this blog post, you’ll learn how to set up application performance monitoring for the server side and browser monitoring for the frontend using the new App Router, giving you full-stack observability in your Next.js application. To start, you’ll need a New Relic account and license key, both available for free.

Installing the agent and middleware

Run the following command in your Next.js project to install the New Relic Node.js APM agent and New Relic middleware for Next.js.

npm install newrelic @newrelic/next
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After the command completes successfully, you’ll see the dependencies included in your package.json file.

 "dependencies": { "@newrelic/next": "^0.10.0", "newrelic": "^11.23.0", "next": "14.2.5", "react": "^18", "react-dom": "^18" },
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The @newrelic/next package provides official instrumentation for New Relic monitoring of Next.js applications. It focuses on server-side rendering, middleware, and transaction naming for both page and server requests, ensuring comprehensive observability of server-side activities.

This package is installed separately but integrates seamlessly with the New Relic Node.js agent, offering all the agent’s capabilities for enhanced performance monitoring and error tracking in Next.js applications.

While it doesn’t cover client-side actions, you can inject the New Relic browser agent for client-side telemetry (more on that later in this blog post).

Configuration

To effectively instrument a Next.js application with New Relic, you need to modify the next.config.js file. This configuration ensures that the modules supported by New Relic are not mangled by webpack, and it externalizes those modules.

Create or update the next.config.js file in your project root with the following content:

'use strict' const nrExternals = require('@newrelic/next/load-externals') module.exports = { experimental: { serverComponentsExternalPackages: ['newrelic'] }, webpack: (config) => { nrExternals(config) return config }
}
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Next, modify your dev and start npm scripts by amending the scripts section of package.json file. Allow your application to run with Node’s -r option, which will preload @newrelic/next middleware.

"scripts": { "dev": "NODE_OPTIONS='-r @newrelic/next' next", "build": "next build", "start": "NODE_OPTIONS='-r @newrelic/next' next start", "lint": "next lint"
}
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Before you run your application, add the newrelic.js AMP agent configuration file to the root directory of your project. For more information, see an example config file for your Next.js app.

Additionally, use NEW_RELIC_APP_NAME and NEW_RELIC_LICENSE_KEY in your .env file as shown in an example .env file for your application.

Viewing performance data in New Relic

Run your application and go to the APM page in New Relic. You’ll see your application’s server-side data flowing into New Relic.

New Relic UI - APM Node agent telemetry summary view, with visualizations of important performance metrics such as transaction time, Apdex score, throughput, and error rate.

Frontend observability

To inject the browser agent when using the App Router, we’ll be editing the app/layout.js(.ts) file.

import Script from 'next/script'
import Link from 'next/link'
import newrelic from 'newrelic'
import './style.css' export default async function RootLayout({ children }) { if (newrelic.agent.collector.isConnected() === false) { await new Promise((resolve) => { newrelic.agent.on("connected", resolve) }) } const browserTimingHeader = newrelic.getBrowserTimingHeader({ hasToRemoveScriptWrapper: true, allowTransactionlessInjection: true, }) return ( <html> <Script id="nr-browser-agent" dangerouslySetInnerHTML={{ __html: browserTimingHeader }} />
 <body> <ul className="navbar"> <li><a href="/">Home</a></li> <li><Link href="/users" key={"users"}>Users</Link></li> <li><Link href="/about" key={"about"}>About</Link></li> </ul>
 {children} </body>
 </html>
 )
}
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Here are the steps for this process:

  1. Install the newrelic npm package if you haven’t already with the npm install newrelic @newrelic/next command.

  2. Add the newrelic.getBrowserTimingHeader method.

    1. Pass hasToRemoveScriptWrapper: true as an argument to newrelic.getBrowserTimingHeader so that the browser script is returned without the <script> wrapper. See the node-newrelic docs for more details.
    2. Pass allowTransactionlessInjection: true as an argument to newrelic.GetBrowserTimingHeader to allow injection of the browser agent when not in a transaction.

  3. In the render method, inject the New Relic Browser agent script to the end of the <body> of the document.

  4. The layout.js(.ts) file should be in the root of the app directory of your project.

For the example layout.js(.ts) file, visit the following link.

Viewing browser data in New Relic

Start the application and then go to the browser monitoring page in New Relic to see client-side data from your application flowing into New Relic.

New Relic UI - Browser telemetry summary view, with visualization of important metrics such as core web vitals, user time on the page, load times, page views or throughput.

Sending detailed error information to New Relic

For capturing detailed error information in your Next.js application, you need to handle both client-side and server-side errors.

Client-side errors

For client-side errors, you can use the error.ts(.js) file to capture and send error details to New Relic. Below is an example of how this can be implemented:

"use client"; import React, { useEffect } from "react"; const Error = ({ error }) => { useEffect(() => { if (window.newrelic) { window.newrelic.noticeError(error); } }, [error]); return <div>Something went wrong</div>;
}; export default Error;
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In this example, the useEffect hook is used to call window.newrelic.noticeError whenever an error occurs. This sends the error details to New Relic for further analysis.

error.js(.ts) file defines an error UI boundary for a route segment. To handle errors in root layout, use global-error.js(.ts) and place it in the root app directory.

For more information on error handling in Next.js, refer to the Next.js documentation.

Server-side errors

For errors coming from the backend, the @newrelic/next module handles them out of the box. You don’t need to add any additional code for server-side error tracking; the module will automatically capture and report these errors to New Relic.

This ensures that both client-side and server-side errors are effectively monitored and reported to New Relic, providing comprehensive error tracking for your Next.js application.

Next steps

You can find all the code samples in this blog post in the newrelic-node-examples GitHub repository. You can give us any feedback in the GitHub repository issues section.
Check out our Next.js integration page on GitHub.
Sign up for a free New Relic account. Your free account includes 100 GB/month of free data ingest, one free full-access user, and unlimited free basic users.

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