To automatically instrument your RUM application:

1. In Datadog, navigate to the Digital Experience > Add an Application Page and select the JavaScript (JS) application type.

2. Select Auto-Instrumentation and NGINX.

3. Set your Session and Session Replay sample rates. See guidance on configuring sampling.

4. Copy and run the installer command to load the Datadog NGINX Module with the RUM SDK Injector onto NGINX.

5. After the installer successfully installs the SDK Injector, restart NGINX to begin collecting RUM sessions.

6. (Optional) To verify the module is successfully injecting the RUM Browser SDK into HTML pages, check the NGINX error logs for relevant messages. The module logs important steps during the injection process. Ensure that NGINX is configured with at least the INFO log level with the following:

   error_log <file> info;
   

To manually load the module onto your web server instead of running the installation script, follow the instructions below.

To manually instrument your RUM application:

Download the appropriate .tgz file

1. Use the .tgz file corresponding to your version of NGINX. You can find all the relevant .tgz files listed by NGINX version under Reference.
2. Extract the tarball to extract the ngx_http_datadog_module.so file. Move it to a location that NGINX has access to (referenced as <RUM_MODULE_PATH> in the steps below).

Update NGINX configuration

1. The nginx.conf file is usually located in NGINX’s configuration directory. Add the following line to load the module:

   load_module <RUM_MODULE_PATH>;
   

2. Then in the http/server/location section, add the following:

   # APM Tracing is enabled by default. The following line disables APM Tracing.
   datadog_disable;
   datadog_rum on;
   datadog_rum_config "v5" {
     "applicationId" "<DATADOG_APPLICATION_ID>";
     "clientToken" "<DATADOG_CLIENT_TOKEN>";
     "site" "<DATADOG_SITE>";
     "service" "my-web-application";
     "env" "production";
     "version" "1.0.0";
     "sessionSampleRate" "100";
     "sessionReplaySampleRate" "100";
     "trackResources" "true";
     "trackLongTasks" "true";
     "trackUserInteractions" "true";
   }
   

Restart your server

1. Restart the NGINX server to begin collecting data for your Datadog RUM application. By default, the RUM SDK is injected to all HTML documents. You may need to clear your browser cache.

2. (Optional) To verify the module is successfully injecting the RUM Browser SDK into HTML pages, check the NGINX error logs for relevant messages. The module logs important steps during the injection process. Ensure that NGINX is configured with at least the INFO log level with the following:

   error_log <file> info;