What is PHP?
PHP is a general-purpose scripting language geared toward web development. PHP was originally an abbreviation of Personal Home Page, but it now stands for the recursive initialism PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor.
PHP code is usually processed on a web server by a PHP interpreter implemented as a module, a daemon or as a Common Gateway Interface (CGI) executable. On a web server, the result of the interpreted and executed PHP code – which may be any type of data, such as generated HTML or binary image data – would form the whole or part of an HTTP response. Various web template systems, web content management systems, and web frameworks exist which can be employed to orchestrate or facilitate the generation of that response such as WordPress.
Additionally, PHP can be used for many programming tasks outside the web context, such as standalone graphical applications and robotic drone control. PHP code can also be directly executed from the command line.
PHP application instrumentation
The appservice-php package along with a PHP instrumentation library, collects performance metrics and errors from the application server.
The agent auto-instruments supported technologies and records interesting events, like HTTP requests and database queries depending on the library used. To do this, it uses relevant public APIs when they are provided by the libraries. Otherwise, it carefully wraps the necessary internal methods. This means that for the supported technologies, there are no code changes required.
The instrumentation library automatically keeps track of queries to your data stores to measure their duration and metadata, as well as HTTP related information (like the URL, parameters, and headers).
These events, called Transactions and Spans, are sent to ServicePilot to gain insight into latency issues and error spikes within your application.
PHP application traces monitoring
Resources are automatically created from this package after having deployed the ServicePilot Agent along with the proper PHP APM library and extension configuration. It monitors HTTP(S) web requests from PHP processes.
This gathers summarized statistics (min,max,avg...) per PHP application such as:
- Requests per minute
- Sum of requests by HTTP return codes and methods
- Number of requests in each response time range
- Established vs. Timed-out requests
In order to provide deep PHP application insights, details collected per request include:
- Host and web page path
- Server and client IP
- Real User Response time
- HTTP Return code and method
- Client country and geolocation for public IPs
How to install a appservice-php resource?
- Use your ServicePilot OnPremise installation or a SaaS account.
- Add a new appservice-php resource via the web interface (
/prmviews
or/prmresources
) or via API (/prmpackages
page), the default ServicePilot agent or another agent will be provisioned automatically.
Details of the appservice-php package are located in the
/prmpackages
page of the software.
Benefits
ServicePilot enables you to deliver IT services faster and more securely with automated discovery and advanced monitoring features.
By correlating the technology PHP APM with APM and infrastructure monitoring, ServicePilot is able to provide a more comprehensive view of an organization's IT environment.
This allows IT teams to quickly identify and diagnose issues that may be impacting application performance, and take corrective action before end-users are affected.
Start with a free trial of our SaaS solution. Explore our plans or contact us to find what works best for you.