[Sentry] Express is not instrumented. This is likely because you required/imported express before calling Sentry.init()

[amiranvarov]

Is there an existing issue for this?

• I have checked for existing issues https://github.com/getsentry/sentry-javascript/issues
• I have reviewed the documentation https://docs.sentry.io/
• I am using the latest SDK release https://github.com/getsentry/sentry-javascript/releases

How do you use Sentry?

Sentry Saas (sentry.io)

Which SDK are you using?

@sentry/node

SDK Version

8.0.0

Framework Version

express@^4.18.1, @nx/express": "18.2.2

Link to Sentry event

No response

SDK Setup

// main.ts
import * as Sentry from "@sentry/node";
import { nodeProfilingIntegration } from "@sentry/profiling-node";
Sentry.init({
	serverName: "auth-service",
	dsn: process.env.SENTRY_DSN,
	environment: process.env.NODE_ENV,
	enabled: true,
	debug: process.env.NODE_ENV !== "production",
	integrations: [Sentry.httpIntegration(), Sentry.expressIntegration(), nodeProfilingIntegration()],
	// Set tracesSampleRate to 1.0 to capture 100%
	// of transactions for performance monitoring.
	// We recommend adjusting this value in production
	tracesSampleRate: 1.0,
	beforeSend(event, hint) {
		const error = hint.originalException as Error;
		if (error?.message?.match(/database unavailable/i)) {
			event.fingerprint = ["database-unavailable"];
		}

		// Modify or drop the event here
		if (event.user) {
			// Don't send user's email address
			event.user.email = undefined;
		}

		return event;
	},

	// Called for transaction events
	beforeSendTransaction(event) {
		// Modify or drop the event here
		if (event.transaction === "/unimportant/route") {
			// Don't send the event to Sentry
			return null;
		}
		return event;
	},
	beforeBreadcrumb(breadcrumb, hint) {
		// Check if the breadcrumb has sensitive data like user email
		if (breadcrumb.data?.["user"]?.email) {
			// Remove the user email from the breadcrumb
			breadcrumb.data["user"].email = undefined;
		}
		return breadcrumb;
	},
	includeLocalVariables: true,
	attachStacktrace: true,
});

/// rest of the app

Steps to Reproduce

1. install NX
2. Install NX's express
3. run nx run --target=serve

I did right as you suggested it in your docs. Imprted and initialised Sentry first thing first. But still, it's not working

Expected Result

Do not have [Sentry] Express is not instrumented. This is likely because you required/imported express before calling Sentry.init() message, and

Actual Result

Having error message: [Sentry] Express is not instrumented. This is likely because you required/imported express before calling Sentry.init() message, and

[amiranvarov]

Strange... I did some code refactoring, and didn't touch this part I shared at all.. somehow I'm not having this error anymore. I will close this issue for a bit, if I encounter it again, I'll reopen it

[amiranvarov]

Isse came back again, I have no idea why. I didn't change anything. tried to update to latest Sentry, didn't help. Tried to nuke node_modules. lock file and everything, still didn't work. This is some weird mystery...

[andreiborza]

Hi there,

Things changed in v8 a bit, most integrations are now automatically added and you no longer have to take care of those (with the exception of nodeProfilingIntegration in your example).

We recommend going through the migration guide here. You can use npx @sentry/migr8@latest to take care of it for you, or follow the steps to manually set it up here.

In your particular example, could you try removing Sentry.httpIntegration() and Sentry.expressIntegration() and report back?

[amiranvarov]

hey, thanks for getting back @andreiborza! I did follow the migration guide, and used npx @sentry/migr8@latest right from the start. But no, it didn't help.

As you suggested, i removed Sentry.httpIntegration and Sentry.expressIntegration() it didn't help. Then i removed all of the integrations, didn't help either. still getting this message.

[amiranvarov]

If it helps, you may check my comment on another similar issue that was opened 2 days ago:
#12105

[amiranvarov]

If that help,s we can have a short screensharing call so u can get the context you need

[andreiborza]

Have you updated to 8.2.1 yet? Same result?

Could you please provide

• node version you are running
• the updated code snippets after your migration attempts (instrument.ts and main.ts)
• the way you run your application (i.e. the script behind auth-service:build:development)

I see a .ts ending in the comment, what are you using to bundle your app?

[amiranvarov]

yes, updated just yesterday. And yes, same result.

• node v20.13.1
• will provide later today
• I'm not sure what exactly do you mean? the whole code of my microservice? if so, can't share much of it, it's private :( If you mean the way u run the script itself: just nx run auth-service:build:development. In the screen you may say that I didn't type it manually, that's because I'm using NX's VScode extension that will run this script for me with one click, but it should not matter for your debugging as it's still running nx run auth-service:build:development

Regarding bundler: I'm using @nx/esbuild, as it comes as built-in bundler in NX.

Here is part of my NX project (this microservice) config:
apps/auth-service/project.json

{
	"name": "auth-service",
	"$schema": "../../node_modules/nx/schemas/project-schema.json",
	"sourceRoot": "apps/auth-service/src",
	"projectType": "application",
	"targets": {
		"build": {
			"executor": "@nx/esbuild:esbuild",
			"outputs": ["{projectRoot}/build"],
			"defaultConfiguration": "production",
			"options": {
				"platform": "node",
				"outputPath": "{projectRoot}/build",
				"format": ["cjs"],
				"bundle": true,
				"main": "apps/auth-service/src/main.ts",
				"tsConfig": "apps/auth-service/tsconfig.app.json",
				"assets": ["apps/auth-service/src/assets"],
				"generatePackageJson": true,
				"esbuildOptions": {
					"sourcemap": true,
					"outExtension": {
						".js": ".js"
					}
				}
			},
			"configurations": {
				"development": {},
				"production": {
					"generateLockfile": true,
					"esbuildOptions": {
						"sourcemap": false,
						"outExtension": {
							".js": ".js"
						}
					}
				}
			}
		},

[amiranvarov]

Isse came back again, I have no idea why. I didn't change anything. tried to update to latest Sentry, didn't help. Tried to nuke node_modules. lock file and everything, still didn't work. This is some weird mystery...

I figured why I stopped having this issue at that time, I removed sentry.setupExpressErrorHandler(app), that's why I didn't get that message. But the problem was still there, although I didn't see it in the console. So this issue is persistent

[mydea]

So you should def. not remove the error handler :D Do you know if your app is being run as a CommonJS or ESM app? Basically, if you look into your build/dist folder, are the files in there using import or require?

[amiranvarov]

it's CJS, for sure :)

[andreiborza]

could you please post snippets of instrument.ts and the top of your app where you import sentry and express and setup the handler?

[Nabil372]

Hi, I'm also seeing:

[Sentry] Express is not instrumented. This is likely because you required/imported express before calling `Sentry.init()`.

in my application logs despite following the sentry onboarding guide for express apps.

Errors are still sent to sentry and everything seems to work fine though.

Here's the code that I'm running:
https://github.com/Nabil372/sentry-playground

[mydea]

Hi, I'm also seeing:

[Sentry] Express is not instrumented. This is likely because you required/imported express before calling `Sentry.init()`.

in my application logs despite following the sentry onboarding guide for express apps.

Errors are still sent to sentry and everything seems to work fine though.

Here's the code that I'm running: https://github.com/Nabil372/sentry-playground

Are you not using performance? This is a bug in the current version, that it will show this warning if performance is disabled - it's safe to ignore it! In 8.3.0 (which should be out soon) this warning will be fixed/removed.

[mydea]

Is this only happening in Jest tests? This is not really something we support (well) right now, because the Jest environment is not a proper/full Node environment, so stuff may not be working there properly 🤔

[gdbjohnson]

I don't know if it's happening correctly in prod / stage. I couldn't generate the correct events in test, so I didn't go further. @lforst , I just used my tests as an easy way to generate events for Sentry (normally I would turn off events from local / test). First time I've used Sentry with Node. I'll try running it for real and see what happens.

[gdbjohnson]

@mydea / @lforst : I guess I should apologize since I can see events in my sentry account when I just run it normally. We're moving really fast here, but I should have tried this before logging a ticket. My bad. If Sentry doesn't work within a Jest context, perhaps Sentry can test for this and log a warning to the console for a better developer experience? Not sure if that's easy to detect or not. Anyways, glad we can get up and running with the product!

[mydea]

🙏 all good, that's great to hear!

I think we could potentially add a check for process.env.JEST_WORKER_ID when calling init in @sentry/node and log a small, helpful warning there. PRs for this are welcome! :)

[gdbjohnson]

@mydea / @lforst : I'm not entirely sure what's happened, but I managed to get some events, but I'm also still getting the warning and most of the events are not happening. It's intermittent. I think it's because we are using express v5.0.0-beta.3 on most of our services. I downgraded to 4, and I don't see the Sentry warning. But I'm not convinced this is 100% it.

Also, I get this error consistently.

Exception has occurred: TypeError: Failed to parse URL from 
  at new Request (node:internal/deps/undici/undici:5855:19)
    at fetch (node:internal/deps/undici/undici:10123:25)
    at Object.fetch (node:internal/deps/undici/undici:12344:10)
    at fetch (node:internal/process/pre_execution:336:27)
    at loadFetch (/Users/gregory/Work/booking-backend/node_modules/.pnpm/[email protected]_@[email protected]/node_modules/opentelemetry-instrumentation-fetch-node/src/index.ts:81:11)
    at new FetchInstrumentation (/Users/gregory/Work/booking-backend/node_modules/.pnpm/[email protected]_@[email protected]/node_modules/opentelemetry-instrumentation-fetch-node/src/index.ts:121:5)

[Lms24]

We'll continue to look into this next week as this week is Hackweek at Sentry.

[lforst]

@gdbjohnson That is very likely the cause as the OpenTelemetry express instrumentation is version-locked to version 4: https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-js-contrib/blob/de7a6cb77e643ed0de82e514510089fba5ae0405/plugins/node/opentelemetry-instrumentation-express/src/instrumentation.ts#L62

[mydea]

We should add an option to opt-out of these warnings, IMHO. I opened an issue for this: #13471

In this case it is true/correct that express will not be properly performance instrumented. But there is nothing you can do about this as a user, and error monitoring should still work, so you can safely ignore this warning - you'll get basic (un-parametrized) http.server spans through the http instrumentation, but no express-specific tracing data, sadly. I think it is unlikely that OpenTelemetry support will be added before v5 of express is out of beta (which, who nows if/when this will happen :O )

[gdbjohnson]

@mydea if Sentry will simply not work with Express v5, you really need to put that on your documentation. This page would be a good spot. I reviewed it and I didn't see any block indicating express version that Sentry is compatible with.

https://docs.sentry.io/platforms/javascript/guides/express/

Tooling with express is a critical requirement for what we need, so I have a hard choice to either downgrade express or find a different provider for error capture.

[mydea]

@mydea if Sentry will simply not work with Express v5, you really need to put that on your documentation. This page would be a good spot. I reviewed it and I didn't see any block indicating express version that Sentry is compatible with.

https://docs.sentry.io/platforms/javascript/guides/express/

Tooling with express is a critical requirement for what we need, so I have a hard choice to either downgrade express or find a different provider for error capture.

So error monitoring should still work, I believe. As long as middlewares have not changed, ours should still be compatible. Only tracing (performance monitoring) will not work in detail, as mentioned above - meaning you will still get traces, only without parametrisation, and no middleware spans. But there should still be enough details to see what's generally going on!

Generally we do not support beta-level releases, unless otherwise stated. When express v5 goes stable, we will make sure to support it as soon as possible. From what I see from release notes etc. middlewares should not (?) have changed, so you can ignore the warning that instrumentation did not work for now. Alternatively, if you really want to get rid of the warning, you can also manually add the middleware like this:

import * as Sentry from '@sentry/node';

app.use(Sentry.expressErrorHandler());

[SteffenLanger]

Issue with Feathers Framework

In case anyone finds this issue and uses feathers with express: The warning is generated because the function setupExpressErrorHandler() checks if the express function app.use() was wrapped by Sentry. Even if it was, the check always fails and produces a warning because the feathers function feathersExpress() overwrites the express app's app.use() with its own implementation - thus the warning.

Solution/Workaround

Skip the check.
Sentry's setupExpressErrorHandler() looks like this:

function setupExpressErrorHandler(
  app,
  options,
) {
  app.use(expressErrorHandler(options));
  ensureIsWrapped(app.use, 'express');
}

Therefore, you can simply replace Sentry.setupExpressErrorHandler(app, options) with app.use(expressErrorHandler(options));

[yogendrarana]

I removed this error middleware:
Sentry.setupExpressErrorHandler(app);

and instead used this one:
app.use(Sentry.expressErrorHandler());

The [Sentry] Express is not instrumented warning went away.

[Lms24]

Hi, I wouldn't recommend removing the setupExpressErrorHandler function as we could theoretically also use it for more things than just for adding the middleware. Unless of course, you know what you're doing and you're willing to take that chance :)

#13471 will provide you an option to silence these warnings once it is merged and released (soon).

[mydea]

FYI you can now configure disableInstrumentationWarnings: true in your init to avoid the warning!

see #13693