ApplicationInsights setAutoCollectRequests not logging

[sajidhashmi]

setAutoCollectRequests is not logging on applicationInsights until not manually triggered.

My main.ts looks like below:

import * as appInsights from "applicationinsights";
import express from "express";
import * as dotenv from "dotenv";

const CONNECTION_STRING = conn_string;

if (!CONNECTION_STRING) {
console.error("Application Insights connection string is missing.");
process.exit(1);
}

dotenv.config();

// Initialize Application Insights
appInsights.setup(CONNECTION_STRING)
.setAutoCollectRequests(true)
.setAutoCollectPerformance(true, true)
.setAutoCollectExceptions(true)
.setSendLiveMetrics(true)
.setInternalLogging(true, true)
.start();

const client = appInsights.defaultClient;
const app = express();
const PORT = 3000;

// Middleware to log requests manually (if auto-collection fails)
app.use((req: express.Request, res: express.Response, next: express.NextFunction) => {
const startTime = Date.now();
res.on("finish", () => {
const duration = Date.now() - startTime;
client.trackRequest({
name: ${req.method} ${req.url},
url: req.url,
duration,
resultCode: res.statusCode.toString(),
success: res.statusCode < 400,
properties: {
method: req.method,
userAgent: req.headers["user-agent"] || "unknown",
},
});
});

next();

});

app.get("/", (req: express.Request, res: express.Response) => {
res.send("Hello, World!");
client.trackTrace({ message: "Home page accessed" });
});

app.get("/error", (req: express.Request, res: express.Response) => {
try {
throw new Error("Test error");
} catch (error) {
client.trackException({ exception: error as Error });
res.status(500).send("An error occurred");
}
});

app.listen(PORT, () => {
console.log(Server running on port ${PORT});
});

package.json
{ "dependencies": { "@azure/core-tracing": "^1.2.0", "@azure/opentelemetry-instrumentation-azure-sdk": "^1.0.0-beta.8", "applicationinsights": "^3.5.0", "dotenv": "^16.4.7", "express": "^5.0.1" }, "devDependencies": { "@types/express": "^5.0.0", "@types/node": "^22.13.5", "typescript": "^5.7.3" } }

Am I doing anything wrong or is there a bug?

[JacksonWeber]

@sajidhashmi As per https://github.com/microsoft/ApplicationInsights-node.js?tab=readme-ov-file#get-started it's important to initialize the SDK as soon as possible. If you initialize after importing express it will not instrument the express package (hence why you're not seeing any auto-collected requests.