Phoenix SDK Guide

To integrate your Elixir Phoenix application with APItoolkit, you need to use this SDK to monitor incoming traffic, aggregate the requests, and then send them to APItoolkit’s servers. Kindly follow this guide to get started and learn about all the supported features of APItoolkit’s Phoenix SDK.

Prerequisites

Ensure you have already completed the first three steps of the onboarding guide.

Installation

To install the SDK, kindly add apitoolkit_phoenix to the list of dependencies in the mix.exs file, like so:

def deps do
  [
    {:apitoolkit_phoenix, "~> 0.1.1"}
  ]
end

Then, run the mix deps.get command to install the apitoolkit_phoenix dependency.

Configuration

Next, import and initialize the ApitoolkitPhoenix Plug in your router.ex file, like so:

defmodule HelloWeb.Router do
  use HelloWeb, :router
  use Plug.ErrorHandler
  import ApitoolkitPhoenix

  pipeline :api do
    plug :accepts, ["json"]
    plug ApitoolkitPhoenix,
      config: %{
        api_key: "{ENTER_YOUR_API_KEY_HERE}",
        debug: false,
      }
    # Other plugs...
  end
end

In the configuration above, only the api_key option is required, but you can add the following optional fields:

Option	Description
`debug`	Set to `true` to enable debug mode.
`redact_headers`	A list of HTTP header keys to redact.
`redact_response_body`	A list of JSONPaths from the request body to redact.
`redact_request_body`	A list of JSONPaths from the response body to redact.

Tip

The {ENTER_YOUR_API_KEY_HERE} demo string should be replaced with the API key generated from the APItoolkit dashboard.

Redacting Sensitive Data

If you have fields that are sensitive and should not be sent to APItoolkit servers, you can mark those fields to be redacted (the fields will never leave your servers).

To mark a field for redacting via this SDK, you need to provide additional arguments to the config key with paths to the fields that should be redacted. There are three arguments you can provide to configure what gets redacted, namely:

redact_headers: A list of HTTP header keys.
redact_request_body: A list of JSONPaths from the request body.
redact_response_body: A list of JSONPaths from the response body.

JSONPath is a query language used to select and extract data from JSON files. For example, given the following sample user data JSON object:

{
  "user": {
    "name": "John Martha",
    "email": "[email protected]",
    "addresses": [
      {
        "street": "123 Main St",
        "city": "Anytown",
        "state": "CA",
        "zip": "12345"
      },
      {
        "street": "123 Main St",
        "city": "Anytown",
        "state": "CA",
        "zip": "12345"
      }
    ],
    "credit_card": {
      "number": "4111111111111111",
      "expiration": "12/28",
      "cvv": "123"
    }
  }
}

Examples of valid JSONPath expressions would be:

JSONPath	Description
`$.user.addresses[*].zip`	In this case, APItoolkit will replace the `zip` field in all the objects of the `addresses` list inside the `user` object with the string `[CLIENT_REDACTED]`.
`$.user.credit_card`	In this case, APItoolkit will replace the entire `credit_card` object inside the `user` object with the string `[CLIENT_REDACTED]`.

Tip

To learn more about JSONPaths, please take a look at the official docs or use this JSONPath Evaluator to validate your JSONPath expressions.

You can also use our JSON Redaction Tool to preview what the final data sent from your API to APItoolkit will look like, after redacting any given JSON object.

Here’s an example of what the configuration would look like with redacted fields:

defmodule HelloWeb.Router do
  use HelloWeb, :router
  use Plug.ErrorHandler
  import ApitoolkitPhoenix

  pipeline :api do
    plug :accepts, ["json"]
    # Other plugs
    plug ApitoolkitPhoenix,
      config: %{
        api_key: "{ENTER_YOUR_API_KEY_HERE}",
        redact_headers: ["content-type", "Authorization", "HOST"],
        redact_request_body: ["$.user.email", "$.user.addresses"],
        redact_response_body: ["$.users[*].email", "$.users[*].credit_card"]
      }
  end
end

Note

The redact_headers config field expects a list of case-insensitive headers as strings.
The redact_request_body and redact_response_body config fields expect a list of JSONPaths as strings.
The list of items to be redacted will be applied to all endpoint requests and responses on your server.

Error Reporting

With APItoolkit, you can track and report different unhandled or uncaught errors, API issues, and anomalies at different parts of your application. This will help you associate more detail and context from your backend with any failing customer request.

To report all uncaught errors and service exceptions, use the `report_error()` method, passing in the `connection` and `error` arguments in the `handle_errors` function, like so:

@impl Plug.ErrorHandler
def handle_errors(conn, err) do
  conn = report_error(conn, err)
  json(conn, %{message: "Something went wrong!"})
end

To manually report specific errors at different parts of your application, call the `report_error()` method anywhere within a controller, also passing in the `connection`, `error`, and `__STACKTRACE__` arguments, like so:

defmodule HelloWeb.PageController do
  use HelloWeb, :controller
  import ApitoolkitPhoenix

  def home(conn, _params) do
    try do
      raise("Oops, something went wrong!")
    rescue
      err ->
        # Report the error to APItoolkit
        report_error(conn, err, __STACKTRACE__)
    end

    json(conn, %{message: "Hello, world!"})
  end
end

Explore the Phoenix SDK