How to detect and measure event loop blocking in node.js?

Question

I'd like to monitor how long each run of the event loop in node.js takes. However I'm uncertain about the best way to measure this. The best way I could come up with looks like this:

var interval = 500;
var interval = setInterval(function() {
    var last = Date.now();        
    setImmediate(function() {
        var delta = Date.now() - last;
        if (delta > blockDelta) {
            report("node.eventloop_blocked", delta);
        }
    });
}, interval);

I basically infer the event loop run time by looking at the delay of a setInterval. I've seen the same approach in the blocked node module but it feels inaccurate and heavy. Is there a better way to get to this information?

Update: Changed the code to use setImmediate as done by hapi.js.

Answer 1

"Is there a better way to get this information?" I don't have a better way to test the eventloop than checking the time delay of SetImmediate, but you can get better precision using node's high resolution timer instead of Date.now()

var interval = 500;
var interval = setInterval(function() {
    var last = process.hrtime();          // replace Date.now()        
    setImmediate(function() {
        var delta = process.hrtime(last); // with process.hrtime()
        if (delta > blockDelta) {
            report("node.eventloop_blocked", delta);
        }
    });
}, interval);

NOTE: delta will be a tuple Array [seconds, nanoseconds].

For more details on process.hrtime(): https://nodejs.org/api/all.html#all_process_hrtime

"The primary use is for measuring performance between intervals."

Answer 2

Check out this plugin https://github.com/tj/node-blocked I'm using it now and it seems to do what you want.

let blocked = require("blocked");

blocked(ms => {
  console.log("EVENT LOOP Blocked", ms);
});

Will print out how long in ms the event loop is blocked for