Counter
A counter is a metric representing a cumulative quantity that generally increases as occurrences are counted, apart from resets or other explicit reinitialization.
Machine Learning Platform Engineering
A counter is a monotonically nondecreasing metric intended to count occurrences such as requests.
- How it is used
- Counts cumulative application events for Prometheus scraping, Grafana visualization, and operational monitoring.
- How deep it goes
- Defines monotonicity, demonstrates declaration and incrementing, and distinguishes counters from gauges and histograms.
- Examples
- Counts HTTP requests and ranked-movie responses, then visualizes cumulative activity as Grafana time series.
- What you can do after
- Apply it via prometheus-client by defining a Counter, incrementing events, exposing /metrics, and charting activity.
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Learn Docker in a Month of Lunches, Second Edition
A counter is a metric that increases over time and represents a cumulative count of events.
- How it is used
- Records cumulative application events for Prometheus collection and operational dashboards.
- How deep it goes
- Explains the definition, declaration, increment operation, endpoint inspection, and dashboard query, but not advanced metric types.
- Examples
- Demonstrates access requests, HTTP 200 responses, Node.js instrumentation, repeated requests, and Grafana dashboard queries.
- What you can do after
- Apply it via a Prometheus client library, expose metrics, generate traffic, and visualize cumulative events in Grafana.
Read how Learn Docker in a Month of Lunches, Second Edition explains counter →
Cloud Observability in Action
A counter is a metric type whose value represents a quantity that generally increases over time, apart from resets.
- How it is used
- Tracks cumulative event occurrences and supports calculating event counts over selected time ranges.
- How deep it goes
- Explains monotonic values, point-in-time totals, range differences, labels, and cardinality risks.
- Examples
- Uses HTTP invocation totals, status-code series, 400 responses, and Prometheus API request labels.
- What you can do after
- Evaluate cumulative totals and calculate event counts across time ranges using labeled time series.
Quarkus in Action
A counter is a metric that records a value intended to increase monotonically as occurrences are counted.
- How it is used
- Counts business events in Quarkus applications alongside automatically collected framework metrics.
- How deep it goes
- Defines counter semantics and demonstrates annotation, registry, metadata, exposure, and visualization, without detailing storage internals.
- Examples
- Uses orders and car registrations, @Counted methods, MeterRegistry calls, /q/metrics output, and Grafana dashboards.
- What you can do after
- Build it from scratch with @Counted or MeterRegistry, then expose and inspect it through Prometheus-compatible metrics.
Related concepts
- performancekind of · Performance is the measurable effectiveness or operational behavior of a system under specified conditions, assessed through relevant qualities such as task results, speed, responsiveness, throughput, or resource use.
- metrickind of · A metric is a quantitative measure used to characterize or assess a property, condition, behavior, performance, or outcome.
- @Countedproduced by · @Counted is a Micrometer annotation that declares counting of invocations of an annotated method.
- MeterRegistryuses · MeterRegistry is Micrometer’s central component for registering, retrieving, and managing meters such as counters, timers, and gauges.
- least frequently useduses · Least frequently used is a cache-eviction policy that removes the entry with the lowest access frequency when capacity is exhausted.
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