Profilejs: Express V8 profiler middleware

version: 0.0.4

Copyright (c)2011, by Branko Vukelic branko@herdhound.com.

Some rights reserved.

Licensed under MIT license (see LICENSE)

Overview

Profilejs is an Express framework middleware that profiles request handlers using the V8 profiler by Danny Coates.

Profilejs is most useful when used in conjunction with node-inspector where you can analyze the collected information from a graphical in-browser interface.

Profilejs is developed and maintained by foxbunny.

Status of this library

This library hasn't seen any real-life use yet. It is freshly brewed and you should keep that in mind before using. It has only been lightly tested on V8 3.2.10.2 with Node 0.4.10, and v8-profiler 0.0.3. There are no guarantees Profilejs will run with either older or newer versions of the involved software.

0.0.4

Major change in 0.0.4 is that the dummy profiler no longer outputs anything to console, unlike in previous versions. The internal plumbing has been reworked to make the dummy profiler truly do nothing, so you'll no longer see any ouput from it.

The Profile object now has enabled property which enables or disables the actual profi-ling. It's the same as using dummy profiler, but on a per-profile basis.

Installation

Simplest way to install Profilejs is to simply grab it from the github repository, and put it in your source tree. Alternatively you may use npm to install it:

npm install profilejs

You also need to have V8-profiler installed:

npm install v8-profiler

Starting the profiler

You can start the profiler using the module's start() method:

var profilejs = require('profilejs');
profilejs.start();

Start method takes a single boolean argument, which enables (start(true)) or disables (start(false)) the silent mode which suppresses console output.

To stop profiling requests, use the stop() method. The stop method doesn't actually stop the profiler, but disables it's profiling functionality. In case of profiler middleware, there is still a small overhead introduced by the part of code that checks if the profiler should run. If you care about this, you should probably remove the middleware completely.

Adding the profiler middleware

Before starting the profiler, you need to add the profiler middleware:

app.use(profilejs.profiler);

Once the middleware is placed in an appropriate place in the stack, you can actually start it. It is best to specify a separate environment for profiling because profiling can kill application performance.

app.configure('profiling', function(){
  profilejs.start();
});

After this, you can start your app with 'profiling' environment set:

NODE_ENV=profiling node app.js

Profiling without the middleware

It is possible to profile non-request code separtely without using the middleware (or in conjunction with the middleware). Inside your library, do this:

var Profile = require('profilejs').Profile

function myProfiledFunction(args) {
  var profiler = new Profile('my-function-profile');
  profiler.start();
  // Do your thing here...
  profiler.end();
}

The above snippet will profile myProfiledFunction and create a profile with the name of 'my-function-profile'. Keep in mind that you still have to start the profiler, even though you don't use the middleware.