how_it_works.md

How it works

All components from App Insights PHP are build on top of official Microsoft App Insights SDK for PHP. Official SDK talks to App Insights API through HTTP protocol.

What about performance? This bundle should not affect your system performance at all however there are some best practices we recommend you to follow (more later).

Basically whole idea behind official SDK is to collect all metrics/logs in memory and flush them when needed.

<?php

$appInsights = new ClientFactory('instrumentation_key', Configuration::default());

$appInsights->trackEvent('My Custom Event!');

$redisStartTime = time();

$appInsights->doSomething();

$appInsights->trackDependency('Redis', 'Cache', 'do something()', $redisStartTime);

In above example AppInsights client will track custom event and redis call (dependency) however it will not fire any HTTP call, it needs to be done explicitly by calling flush() method.

<?php

$appInsights->flush();

AppInsightsPHPBundle makes use of Symfony kernel.terminate event to flush SDK telemetry queue.

Read more about tracking:

• Dependencies
• Traces
• PageViews