Profiles

This document defines the Sample format used by Sentry to ingest profiles. This document is meant for Sentry SDK developers and maintainers of the profile ingestion pipeline.

This format is meant to be cross platform and allow to represent samples collected by a profiler.

A profile should always be associated with a transaction and it should be sent in the same envelope as the associated transaction.

Data Model

Example

{
  "debug_meta": {
    "images": [
      {
        "debug_id": "32420279-25E2-34E6-8BC7-8A006A8F2425",
        "image_addr": "0x000000010258c000",
        "code_file": "/private/var/containers/Bundle/Application/C3511752-DD67-4FE8-9DA2-ACE18ADFAA61/TrendingMovies.app/TrendingMovies",
        "type": "macho",
        "image_size": 1720320,
        "image_vmaddr": "0x0000000100000000"
      }
    ]
  },
  "device": {
    "architecture": "arm64e",
    "is_emulator": true,
    "locale": "en_US",
    "manufacturer": "Apple",
    "model": "iPhone14,8"
  },
  "environment": "development",
  "event_id": "41fed0925670468bb0457f61a74688ec",
  "measurements": { ... },
  "os": {
    "build_number": "20D47",
    "name": "iOS",
    "version": "16.3",
  },
  "platform": "cocoa",
  "release": "1.0 (9999)",
  "runtime": {
    "name": "",
    "version": ""
  },
  "timestamp": "2023-01-01T00:00:00.000Z",
  "transaction": {
    "active_thread_id": "259",
    "id": "30976f2ddbe04ac9b6bffe6e35d4710c",
    "name": "example_ios_movies_sources.MoviesViewController",
    "trace_id": "4b25bc58f14243d8b208d1e22a054164",
  },
  "version": "1",
  "profile": {
    "samples": [
      {
        "elapsed_since_start_ns": 1234567890,
        "stack_id": 0,
        "thread_id": "259"
      }
    ],
    "stacks": [
      [ 0 ]
    ],
    "frames": [
      {
        "instruction_addr": "0xa722447ffffffffc"
      }
    ],
    "thread_metadata": {
      "259": {
        "priority": 31
      }
    }
  },
}

Profile metadata

debug_meta

: Object, required on native platforms. This carry the same payload as debug_meta interface. It is required to have it for native platforms in order to symbolicate, otherwise you can omit it.

device

: Object, required. This contains a few fields to describe the device the profiler is running on.

It can have the following attributes:

• architecture: String, required.
• is_emulator: Boolean, optional. Indicates if the application is running in an emulator. Usually only set for mobile platforms.
• locale: String, optional. Contains the local of the system. Usually only set for a mobile platforms.
• manufacturer: String, optional. Contains the manufacturer of the device. Usually only set for a mobile platforms.
• model: String, optional. Contains the model of the device. Usually only set for a mobile platforms.

{
  "device": {
    "architecture": "arm64e",
    "is_emulator": true,
    "locale": "en_US",
    "manufacturer": "Apple",
    "model": "iPhone14,8"
  }
}

environment

: String, recommended. The environment name, such as production or staging. The default value should be production.

event_id

: String, required. Hexadecimal string representing a uuid4 value. The length is exactly 32 characters. Dashes are not allowed. Has to be lowercase.

measurements

: Object, optional. This field contains various metrics measured during the profile collection.

A measurement is a collection of measurement values and a unit for those values. It will only be shown in the UI if it's been integrated. Right now, we only support 2 metrics:

• frozen_frame_renders: when a frozen frame was detected.
• slow_frame_renders: when a slow frame was detected.

A measurement value can contain the following attributes:

• elapsed_since_start_ns: number of nanoseconds since the start of the profile (stored in timestamp). It should be wall time.
• value: value for the measurement, as a float64. We accept float64 formatted as string as well.

These are the values accepted for unit:

• nanosecond
• ns
• hertz
• hz
• byte
• percent

{
  "cpu_0": {
    "unit": "percent",
    "values": {
      "elapsed_since_start_ns: "1234567890",
      "value": 12.64,
    }
  }
}

os

: Object, required. Contains information about the OS.

It can have the following attributes:

• name: String, required. Contains the OS name.
• version: String, required. Contains the OS version.
• build_number: String, optional. Only set it for cocoa platform.

{
  "os": {
    "build_number": "20D47",
    "name": "iOS",
    "version": "16.3"
  }
}

platform

: String, required. This value represents the platform the SDK is submitting from.

Acceptable values are:

• cocoa
• node
• python
• rust

profile

: Object, required. It contains all the raw data collected when profiling. See profile data.

release

: String, required. The release version of the application.

Release versions must be unique across all projects in your organization. This value can be the git SHA for the given project, or a product identifier with a semantic version (suggested format my-project-name@1.0.0).

runtime

: Object, optional. Contains information about the runtime. Usually only used for platforms allowing several runtimes.

It can have the following attributes:

• name
• version

{
  "runtime": {
    "name": "CPython",
    "version": "3.11.2"
  }
}

timestamp

: String, recommended. The timestamp when the profile was captured by the SDK as RFC 3339 format. This is meant to be the anchor for all relative timestamps captured for the profile.

Ideally, this will be the same as the field start_timestamp on the transaction so all relative timestamps for transaction and profile can be both from the same reference point and we don't need to correct relative timestamps.

If for some reasons, the profiler implementation doesn't allow that, set it to the closest time to the profiler start (or to whatever the profiler gives you as a profile start timestamp) and it will be used to align with the transaction later on.

transaction

: Object, required. Contains information about the transaction it is associated with.

It can have the following attributes:

• id: String, required. Contains the transaction ID.
• name: String, required. Contains the name of the transaction.
• trace_id: String, required. Contains the trace ID the transaction is part of.
• active_thread_id: String, required. Contains the thread ID the transaction was started on as uint64 converted to a string. On mobile, this is usually the main thread.

version

: String, required. Represents the version of the Sample format.

Acceptable values are:

• "1"

Profile data

The profile data consists of

• sample, which specifies the start time, their corresponding thread and a stack,
• stacks, which are lists of frames,
• frames, which identify the function and/or line of code for each item in a stacktrace,
• thread metadata, with info about threads.

The selected format is trying to keep the amount of data we transfer to the server as limited as possible.

{
  "profile": {
    "samples": [
      { ... },
      ...
    ],
    "stacks": [
      [ ... ],
      ...
    ],
    "frames": [
      { ... },
      ...
    ],
    "thread_metadata": {
      "259": {
        ...
      }
    }
  }
}

When collecting a stack trace, you will:

1. Capture the stack trace.
2. Capture a timestamp relative to the start of the profile (set in the timestamp field).
3. Capture the thread ID where this stack trace was captured.
4. Create a list of indices for each frames (add it to the frame list if needed or use the existing frame's index).
5. Check if that stack exists in the list of stacks and if it doesn't, add it to the list of stacks
6. Create a sample containing the thread ID, the relative timestamp and the stack ID.

You should collect samples at a frequency of 101Hz, or roughly once every 10 milliseconds.

samples

: List, required Contains a list of sample object captured during execution. Each sample can contain the following attributes:

• elapsed_since_start_ns: String, required. Contains the relative timestamp in nanoseconds since the value contained in the timestamp field when the sample was captured. It's meant to be a uint64 formatted as a string, a float won't be accepted. It should be wall time.
• stack_id: Integer, required. Contains the stack index from the stacks list.
• thread_id: String, required. Contains the thread ID on which the sample was captured.

{
  "elapsed_since_start_ns": "1234567890",
  "stack_id": 1,
  "thread_id": "259"
}

stacks

: List, required. Contains a list of frame indices forming a stack trace.

Frames in a stack should be ordered from leaf to root. It means your main frame should be at the end of the list.

It's encouraged to deduplicate stacks by only storing it once and referring to the same stack_id for each sample that needs it.

frames

: List, required. Contains a list of frame objects (see Frame Attributes).

Each object should contain at least a filename, function or instruction_addr attribute. All values are optional, but recommended.

For native platforms (cocoa or rust for example), instruction_addr is required in order to be able to symbolicate and get more info about the frame.

For the rest of the platforms, whatever is passed here will travel to the frontend and whatever is available can be used to show more or less information.

We will use module or package (in that order) to group frames when needed.

Some attributes are not used at the moment:

• raw_function
• pre_context
• post_context
• stack_start
• vars
• addr_mode
• platform

thread_metadata

: Object, required. Contains an object with a field for each thread ID detected during runtime.

This object can contain these attributes:

• name: name of the thread.
• priority: the priority of the thread.

This information will be used on the flamechart to power the thread selector.

{
  "thread_metadata": {
    "259": {
      "name": "com.apple.main-thread",
      "priority": 31
    }
  }
}

Validation

We will reject a profile in Relay for several reasons:

• profile data is missing (no frame, no sample, no stack)
• not enough samples (we need at least 2 samples)
• no transaction associated with the profile
• any of the metadata required is missing
• size of the profile exceeds 50MB
• a profile exceeds 30 seconds (difference between last and first sample timestamp)

It is suggested to validate these conditions before sending the profile.

It's suggested to remove unnecessary data like thread data without samples from thread_metadata.

Ingestion

After this payload is generated, serialize it as JSON, pack it into the same Envelope as the associated transaction with the item type profile and send it to Relay.

This envelope should look like this:

{"event_id":"a229377b82ad4898be7c3a6272d052d9"}
{"type":"transaction"}
{ /* transaction JSON payload */ }
{"type":"profile"}
{ /* profile JSON payload */}