Datadog Plugin For IntelliJ IDEA

Overview

The Datadog plugin for IntelliJ IDEA helps you to improve software performance by providing meaningful code-level insights in the IDE based on real-time observability data. Together with the Continuous Profiler, the plugin helps you to reduce latency and lower cloud costs by highlighting code lines that:

• consume the most CPU
• allocate the most memory
• spend the most time on locks, disk I/O, socket I/O, and so on

In addition to code highlighting, you can use the Datadog plugin for Intellij IDEA to:

• Identify methods that consume the most resources with the Top List view.
• Visualize aggregated profile data with the Flame Graph view.
• Navigate directly from the top list and flame graph to the relevant lines in your code.
• Find resource consumption broken down by method name and line number.

Requirements

• A Datadog account: The plugin requires a Datadog account. If you’re new to Datadog, go to the Datadog website to learn more about Datadog’s observability tools and sign up for a free trial.
• Continuous Profiling: To display code-level insights, the plugin requires Continuous Profiling instrumented on your Java Services. For more information, see Getting Started with the Continuous Profiler.

Setup

Install the Datadog plugin

1. Click Plugins and search for Datadog.
2. Click Install to download and install the plugin in your IDE.
3. If you receive a prompt notifying you that Datadog is a third-party plugin, click Accept.
4. Click Restart IDE to restart IDEA.

Alternatively, you can install the plugin from the Jetbrains Marketplace.

Log in to Datadog

After installing the Datadog plugin and restarting IDEA, log in to Datadog:

1. With a file or project open in IDEA, click the Datadog tool window.
2. Click Log in….
3. In the browser window that opens, select your site and organization, then authorize access to the platform.

Note: For most users, one login is all that is required. If you’re using a multi-org setup, check to ensure that the correct account is active. To find out which login IDEA is using, click Preferences -> Tools -> Datadog, and check which account is active.

Link a service

To provide relevant data from the Datadog platform, add relevant services to a project:

1. With your project open in IDEA, open the Datadog tool window and click the plus icon (+).
2. Search for and select the services that you want to add to the current project.

To remove a service, select it in the Services table and click the minus icon (-).

Using the plugin

After you add a service to your project, right-click on the service and click Open in Profiling to open a Profiling tab for the service. A profiling tab displays data for only one service, but you can have multiple tabs open simultaneously.

The Profiling tab shows Continuous Profiling information for the service in a selected environment, aggregated over a specific time frame. Available views are:

• Top list: Displays a list of the most resource intensive methods for the current profiling measure.
• Flame graph: A flame graph representing stack traces in the profiles.

You can specify the following parameters for the profiling data:

• The profile type to be displayed
• The environment in which the service is running
• The time frame for the profile samples to be aggregated

The available profiling types usually include options like CPU Time and Allocated Memory, but are determined by the platform and vary by language.

Top list

The Top List sub-tab shows the methods that consume the most resources based on the aggregated profile data loaded from the Datadog servers. Top List is designed to show a summary of the methods that are most likely to be interesting from a resource consumption point of view.

• Double-clicking an item in the list (or selecting Jump to Source from the context menu) opens a source code editor showing where the method is defined.
• To see a flame graph visualization of a method, select Search in Flame Graph from the context menu.

Call tree

The call tree to the right of the method list shows the paths that lead to (and from) the selected method.

The default Caller Hierarchy view shows the callers (or predecessors) of the target method and the frequency with which they appear in the call stack.

To view the callees (or successors), click Callee Hierarchy.

Right-click on a method in the call tree to see options to navigate to the source editor or flame graph.

Flame graph

A flame graph is a visualization of profiling samples that shows stack traces and their relative frequency during the sample period. The Datadog plugin aggregates data collected over the requested time frame, and multiple individual profiles are aggregated together. Each individual profile covers a 60 second interval within the requested time frame.

Each time you change the profile type, the time frame, or the environment, the Datadog plugin generates a new flame graph.

You can navigate the flame graph in several ways:

• Double-click on any frame to focus on that method and all the methods that it has called during the sampling period.
• Use the minimap to pan around the graph.
• Right-click on a method and select Jump to Source to go to the corresponding point in the source code.

Hovering over a method displays a tooltip with the following information:

• The class name and method signature
• The package name
• The profiling metric value and percentage breakdown.

Profiling samples include stack trace and line number information. Use the Separate Flame Graph by button to switch between separating frames by method or line number.

Datadog Insights

When a Profiling tab is active, Datadog Insights adds code highlights to the source code editor margin. The Datadog plugin displays an icon in the editor margin and highlights code based on the active Profiling data.

• Hover over the icon to see more information.
• Click the icon to open the top list Profiling tab or open Profiling in Datadog.

The active Profiling tab also affects the IDEA project tree view, which is annotated with the selected profile’s metrics:

Feedback

Let us know what you think about the plugin! Provide feedback on our discussion forum, or send an e-mail to team-ide-integration@datadoghq.com.

Further reading

Additional helpful documentation, links, and articles:

Find out more about API and application keys.DOCUMENTATION Getting started with Continuous Profiler.DOCUMENTATION