Installing the App in Nautobot¶

Here you will find detailed instructions on how to install and configure the App within your Nautobot environment.

Prerequisites¶

The app is compatible with Nautobot 3.0.0 and higher.
Databases supported: PostgreSQL, MySQL

Note

Please check the dedicated page for a full compatibility matrix and the deprecation policy.

Install Guide¶

Note

Apps can be installed from the Python Package Index or locally. See the Nautobot documentation for more details. The pip package name for this app is nautobot-graphql-observability.

The app is available as a Python package via PyPI and can be installed with pip:

pip install nautobot-graphql-observability

To ensure the app is automatically re-installed during future upgrades, create a file named local_requirements.txt (if not already existing) in the Nautobot root directory (alongside requirements.txt) and list the nautobot-graphql-observability package:

echo nautobot-graphql-observability >> local_requirements.txt

Once installed, the app needs to be enabled in your Nautobot configuration. The following block of code below shows the additional configuration required to be added to your nautobot_config.py file:

Append "nautobot_graphql_observability" to the PLUGINS list.
Optionally append the "nautobot_graphql_observability" dictionary to the PLUGINS_CONFIG dictionary to override any defaults.

# In your nautobot_config.py
PLUGINS = ["nautobot_graphql_observability"]

PLUGINS_CONFIG = {
    "nautobot_graphql_observability": {
        # Prometheus metrics settings
        "graphql_metrics_enabled": True,
        "track_query_depth": True,
        "track_query_complexity": True,
        "track_field_resolution": False,
        "track_per_user": True,
        # Query logging settings
        "query_logging_enabled": False,
        "log_query_body": False,
        "log_query_variables": False,
    }
}

No GRAPHENE middleware configuration needed

Unlike typical Graphene middleware, you do not need to manually configure GRAPHENE["MIDDLEWARE"] in your settings. The app's ready() method automatically monkey-patches Nautobot's GraphQLDRFAPIView.init_graphql() to load middleware from GRAPHENE["MIDDLEWARE"]. This works around a bug in Nautobot 3.x where the view does not load middleware when self.middleware is None.

Once the Nautobot configuration is updated, run the Post Upgrade command (nautobot-server post_upgrade) to run migrations and clear any cache:

nautobot-server post_upgrade

Then restart (if necessary) the Nautobot services which may include:

Nautobot
Nautobot Workers
Nautobot Scheduler

sudo systemctl restart nautobot nautobot-worker nautobot-scheduler

App Configuration¶

The app behavior can be controlled with the following list of settings:

Prometheus Metrics Settings¶

Key	Type	Default	Description
`graphql_metrics_enabled`	`bool`	`True`	Enable or disable all metrics collection. When `False`, the Prometheus middleware is a no-op.
`track_query_depth`	`bool`	`True`	Record a histogram of GraphQL query nesting depth.
`track_query_complexity`	`bool`	`True`	Record a histogram of GraphQL query complexity (total field count).
`track_field_resolution`	`bool`	`False`	Record per-field resolver duration. Warning: enabling this adds significant overhead for queries with many fields.
`track_per_user`	`bool`	`True`	Record a per-user request counter using the authenticated username.

Query Logging Settings¶

Key	Type	Default	Description
`query_logging_enabled`	`bool`	`False`	Enable or disable GraphQL query logging. When `False`, the logging middleware is a no-op.
`log_query_body`	`bool`	`False`	Include the full GraphQL query text in log entries.
`log_query_variables`	`bool`	`False`	Include the GraphQL query variables in log entries. Warning: may log sensitive data.

Multi-Process Deployments¶

If you run Nautobot with multiple worker processes (e.g. via Gunicorn), you must set the PROMETHEUS_MULTIPROC_DIR environment variable to a writable directory so that prometheus_client can aggregate metrics across processes:

export PROMETHEUS_MULTIPROC_DIR=/tmp/prometheus_multiproc
mkdir -p "$PROMETHEUS_MULTIPROC_DIR"

Nautobot's default /metrics/ endpoint will automatically aggregate metrics from all worker processes when this variable is set.