What should you do to count all requests on specific API endpoints in your application logging?

To effectively count all requests on specific API endpoints in your application logging, creating a Stackdriver counter metric for the endpoint pattern /api/alpha/* is the most comprehensive approach. By using the wildcard *, this metric will capture all requests that match any variations of the endpoint, such as /api/alpha/1, /api/alpha/abc, or any other resource under that path. This flexibility is important because APIs often have dynamic segments in their URLs, and you want to ensure that all variations are included in your counting.

This method enables real-time monitoring and easy visibility into request counts, facilitating performance analysis and operational decision-making. Automating the collection of these metrics through Stackdriver ensures that you can visualize and analyze logs without the manual overhead of processing log files or counting them later.

While options that involve exporting logs to Cloud Storage or Cloud Pub/Sub could provide some level of insight, they are generally more cumbersome and not as efficient for real-time monitoring. Counting lines in log exports may lead to delays and wouldn’t afford the same level of immediate metric collection and analysis that the Stackdriver counter provides. Therefore, the use of a counter metric with a wildcard is the most efficient and effective method for counting all requests on the specified API