Request header collection

AppSignal collects headers for HTTP requests by default for supported frameworks. This data may help track down errors or performance issues that were caused by requests header data a client is sending.

To comply with GDPR rules, collecting no user identifiable data, AppSignal collects a very limited amount of headers by default.

To even further limit the request headers or collect more than the default list of headers, configure AppSignal which headers to collect.

Configure headers

An app's session data can be filtered by configuring keys in an allowlist. This allowlist system will filter out all the session data keys not in this list.

All headers that are filtered out by these systems are not collected, neither the header name or value.

Example

For example, an application with this AppSignal config:

request_headers: ["Request-Method"]

Will only sent the Request-Method header to AppSignal.com, and no other request headers.

Ruby

In the Ruby integration, AppSignal automatically stores the configured request headers for Rails apps and other frameworks. It has a built-in list of request headers to collect by default, that can be customized with the request_headers config option.

• Default list of request headers

To configure which request headers to collect for each request, add the following configuration to your config/appsignal.yml file in the environment group you want it to apply. The request_headers value is an Array of Strings.

# Example: config/appsignal.yml
production:
  request_headers: # Example list of headers
    - PATH_INFO
    - REQUEST_METHOD
    - REQUEST_URI
    - SERVER_NAME
    - SERVER_PORT
    - SERVER_PROTOCOL

Elixir

In the Elixir integration, AppSignal automatically stores the configured request headers for Phoenix apps and other frameworks. It has a built-in list of request headers to collect by default, that can be customized with the request_headers config option.

• Default list of request headers

To configure which request headers to collect for each request, add the following configuration to your config/appsignal.exs file in the environment group you want it to apply. The request_headers value is a List of Strings.

# Example: config/appsignal.exs
config :appsignal, :config,
  request_headers: ~w(
    path-info request-method request-uri server-name server-port server-protocol
  ) # Example list of headers

Node.js

In the Node.js integration, AppSignal automatically stores the configured request headers for Express apps and other frameworks. It has a built-in list of request headers to collect by default, that can be customized with the requestHeaders config option.

• Default list of request headers

To configure which request headers to collect for each request, add the following configuration to your AppSignal client instance creation. The requestHeaders value is an Array of Strings.

const appsignal = new Appsignal({
  requestHeaders: ["accept", "cache-control", "content-length", "range"],
});

Next steps

• Ignore errors - the next step in this guide

• Filtering session data - the previous step in this guide
• Filtering app data - the start of this guide
• Getting started guides - Guides overview