Set up Faro ¶

Add Grafana Faro to a frontend application running on Nais.

Prerequisites ¶

Install ¶

npm install @grafana/faro-web-sdk

If you want browser tracing (connects frontend spans with backend traces), also install:

npm install @grafana/faro-web-tracing

Initialize Faro ¶

Initialize Faro as early as possible in your application so it captures all errors and page loads.

import { initializeFaro, getWebInstrumentations } from '@grafana/faro-web-sdk';

const faro = initializeFaro({
  url: 'https://telemetry.external.prod.test-nais.cloud.nais.io/collect',
  paused: window.location.hostname === 'localhost',
  app: {
    name: 'my-app',   // required — identifies your app in Grafana
    version: '1.0.0',  // optional — useful for comparing behavior across deploys
  },
  instrumentations: [
    ...getWebInstrumentations(),
  ],
});

Setting app.version ¶

Setting a version lets you filter and compare metrics across deploys in Grafana. If you use auto-configuration, the version is extracted from your container image tag automatically.

For manual setup, inject the commit SHA from your CI pipeline:

app: {
  name: 'my-app',
  version: process.env.COMMIT_SHA || 'local',
}

Auto-configuration ¶

The platform can generate the collector URL and app metadata for you. This is the recommended approach for static frontends (nginx, CDN) since the URL is set per cluster — no separate config for dev and prod.

Add this to your nais.yaml:

spec:
  frontend:
    generatedConfig:
      mountPath: /usr/share/nginx/html/js/nais.js

This generates a JavaScript file at the specified path containing the collector URL, your app name (from metadata.name), and version (from your image tag). The environment variable NAIS_FRONTEND_TELEMETRY_COLLECTOR_URL is also set in your pod.

See the auto-configuration reference for the full list of generated values.

Step 1: Create a local nais.js fallback ¶

Create a nais.js file for local development. Nais replaces this file at deploy time with the real values.

export default {
  telemetryCollectorURL: 'http://localhost:12347/collect',
  app: {
    name: 'my-app',
    version: 'local',
  },
};

Step 2: Import and use it ¶

import { initializeFaro, getWebInstrumentations } from '@grafana/faro-web-sdk';
import nais from './nais.js';

const faro = initializeFaro({
  url: nais.telemetryCollectorURL,
  app: nais.app,
  instrumentations: [
    ...getWebInstrumentations(),
  ],
});

Step 3: Exclude nais.js from your bundler ¶

The local fallback file must not be bundled into your production build. Exclude it in your bundler config:

// vite.config.js
export default {
  build: {
    rollupOptions: {
      external: ['./nais.js'],
    },
  },
};

// webpack.config.js
module.exports = {
  externals: {
    './nais.js': 'excludedFile',
  },
};

// next.config.js
module.exports = {
  webpack: (config) => {
    config.externals.push('./nais.js');
    return config;
  },
};

Capture exceptions ¶

Console errors are captured automatically. To get full stack traces for caught exceptions, push them to Faro:

try {
  riskyOperation();
} catch (error) {
  faro.api.pushError(error);
}

Stack traces from pushed errors are automatically deobfuscated if sourcemaps are available.

React error boundaries ¶

Use <FaroErrorBoundary> from @grafana/faro-react to catch React rendering errors. Without this, errors that happen during rendering are silently lost.

import { FaroErrorBoundary } from '@grafana/faro-react';

function App() {
  return (
    <FaroErrorBoundary fallback={<p>Something went wrong</p>}>
      <MyComponent />
    </FaroErrorBoundary>
  );
}

For Next.js, see the dedicated error boundary pattern using error.tsx.

Performance tuning ¶

Faro generates a lot of data by default. Use these options to control the volume:

Session sampling ¶

Only instrument a percentage of user sessions:

initializeFaro({
  // ... other options
  sessionTracking: {
    samplingRate: 0.5, // instrument 50% of sessions
  },
});

Disable console capture ¶

If your app is verbose with console output, disable automatic capture:

initializeFaro({
  // ... other options
  instrumentations: [
    ...getWebInstrumentations({
      captureConsole: false,
    }),
  ],
});

Filter console levels ¶

By default, Faro ignores console.debug, console.trace, and console.log. To change which levels are captured, use the top-level consoleInstrumentation config:

import { LogLevel } from '@grafana/faro-web-sdk';

initializeFaro({
  // ... other options
  consoleInstrumentation: {
    disabledLevels: [LogLevel.DEBUG, LogLevel.TRACE], // capture log, info, warn, error
  },
});

To capture all levels, pass an empty array: disabledLevels: [].

Content Security Policy (CSP) ¶

If your application uses a Content Security Policy, add the collector endpoint to connect-src:

connect-src 'self' https://telemetry.external.prod.test-nais.cloud.nais.io/ https://telemetry.external.dev.test-nais.cloud.nais.io/;

Without this, the browser blocks Faro's requests to the collector. See Troubleshooting for more details.

Privacy and sensitive data ¶

Faro captures console output, errors, and HTTP request URLs automatically. Make sure you don't leak sensitive data:

Use the beforeSend hook to filter or redact telemetry:

initializeFaro({
  // ... other options
  beforeSend: (item) => {
    // Strip query parameters from page URLs (may contain tokens, codes, identifiers)
    if (item.meta?.page?.url) {
      try {
        const url = new URL(item.meta.page.url);
        url.search = '';
        item.meta.page.url = url.toString();
      } catch { /* ignore malformed URLs */ }
    }

    // Drop items that may contain fødselsnummer (11-digit pattern)
    const payload = JSON.stringify(item);
    if (/\d{11}/.test(payload)) {
      return null;
    }

    return item;
  },
});

Local development ¶

Set paused: window.location.hostname === 'localhost' (shown in the init example above) to skip telemetry during local development.

For a full local observability stack, check out the tracing demo repository and run docker-compose up.

Verify it works ¶

{app_name="my-app"} | logfmt

Real-world examples ¶

These navikt repositories use Faro with React Router:

Next steps ¶