Many developers are looking for a platform to which they can send arbitrary data from their custom applications to collect and visualize those metrics, as well as alert on specific thresholds. With Circonus’s ability to accept and parse raw JSON, it’s easy to send metrics from custom applications into the system. More information on JSON parsing can be found here or in the User Docs, but the steps below will get you up and running quickly.

1.) The first step for sending JSON data to Circonus is to create an HTTPTrap check. Under the Checks page, click on “New Check +” in the upper right corner, then expand the JSON option and choose “Push (HTTPTrap)”. Select the HTTPTrap broker from the list, then set up the host and secret. Click on “Test Check”, then “Finish”, even though there are no metrics selected.

2.) Now that the check is created, find that check and go into the details. There will be a “Data Submission URL” listed, which is the URL to which you will PUT the data from your application. Once the data is being submitted at regular intervals (either as frequently as you have it, or every 30 seconds if it is a sample), you can go back into the check to enable the metrics. Alternatively, you can use the Check Bundle API to manage the metrics and enable any metrics that are present but disabled. You can also enable histogram collection using the same methods.

Once data is being collected, you can then start graphing, alerting, streaming to dashboards, and performing analytics on your data. Additionally, if you add other check types to your Circonus account, you can compare these custom metrics to other data to get the full picture of what is really going on at any given time.

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