Lokalise observability

Lokalise Observability

Overview

Monitor Lokalise translation pipeline health: API response times, rate limit consumption, translation completion rates, webhook delivery reliability, file upload/download status, and per-word cost tracking. Built around the @lokalise/node-api SDK with Prometheus-compatible metrics and alerting rules.

Prerequisites

• @lokalise/node-api SDK installed
• Metrics backend (Prometheus, Datadog, CloudWatch, or OpenTelemetry collector)
• Lokalise API token with read access
• Optional: webhook endpoint for real-time event monitoring

Instructions

Step 1: Instrument API Calls with Metrics

Wrap every SDK call to emit duration, success/failure counts, and rate limit status.

import { LokaliseApi } from "@lokalise/node-api";

interface MetricLabels {
  operation: string;
  status: "ok" | "error";
  code?: string;
}

// Implement this to emit to your metrics backend
declare function emitHistogram(name: string, value: number, labels: MetricLabels): void;
declare function emitCounter(name: string, value: number, labels: MetricLabels): void;

const lok = new LokaliseApi({ apiKey: process.env.LOKALISE_API_TOKEN! });

async function trackedApiCall<T>(
  operation: string,
  fn: () => Promise<T>
): Promise<T> {
  const start = performance.now();
  try {
    const result = await fn();
    const durationMs = performance.now() - start;

    emitHistogram("lokalise_api_duration_ms", durationMs, {
      operation,
      status: "ok",
    });
    emitCounter("lokalise_api_requests_total", 1, {
      operation,
      status: "ok",
    });

    return result;
  } catch (err: unknown) {
    const code = (err as { code?: number })?.code?.toString() ?? "unknown";
    const durationMs = performance.now() - start;

    emitHistogram("lokalise_api_duration_ms", durationMs, {
      operation,
      status: "error",
      code,
    });
    emitCounter("lokalise_api_requests_total", 1, {
      operation,
      status: "error",
      code,
    });

    throw err;
  }
}

// Usage — wrap every SDK call
const keys = await trackedApiCall("keys.list", () =>
  lok.keys().list({ project_id: projectId, limit: 500 })
);

const bundle = await trackedApiCall("files.download", () =>
  lok.files().download(projectId, {
    format: "json",
    filter_langs: ["en"],
    original_filenames: false,
  })
);

Step 2: Monitor Translation Completion

Poll project statistics and emit per-locale progress as gauge metrics.

declare function emitGauge(name: string, value: number, labels: Record<string, string>): void;

async function collectTranslationMetrics(projectId: string): Promise<void> {
  const project = await trackedApiCall("projects.get", () =>
    lok.projects().get(projectId)
  );

  // Overall progress
  emitGauge("lokalise_translation_progress_pct", project.statistics?.progress_total ?? 0, {
    project: projectId,
    locale: "all",
  });

  emitGauge("lokalise_keys_total", project.statistics?.keys_total ?? 0, {
    project: projectId,
  });

  // Per-language progress
  const languages = await trackedApiCall("languages.list", () =>
    lok.languages().list({ project_id: projectId, limit: 100 })
  );

  for (const lang of languages.items) {
    emitGauge("lokalise_translation_progress_pct", lang.statistics?.progress ?? 0, {
      project: projectId,
      locale: lang.lang_iso,
    });
    emitGauge("lokalise_words_to_do", lang.statistics?.words_to_do ?? 0, {
      project: projectId,
      locale: lang.lang_iso,
    });
  }
}

// Run on a schedule (every 5 minutes)
// setInterval(() => collectTranslationMetrics(projectId), 5 * 60_000);

Step 3: Track Rate Limit Consumption

set -euo pipefail
# Quick rate limit check — call from a monitoring cron job
HEADERS=$(curl -sI "https://api.lokalise.com/api2/projects?limit=1" \
  -H "X-Api-Token: ${LOKALISE_API_TOKEN}" 2>/dev/null)

LIMIT=$(echo "$HEADERS" | grep -i "x-ratelimit-limit" | awk '{print $2}' | tr -d '\r')
REMAINING=$(echo "$HEADERS" | grep -i "x-ratelimit-remaining" | awk '{print $2}' | tr -d '\r')
RESET=$(echo "$HEADERS" | grep -i "x-ratelimit-reset" | awk '{print $2}' | tr -d '\r')

echo "Rate limit: ${REMAINING}/${LIMIT} remaining (resets at ${RESET})"

# Emit as metrics for Prometheus/Datadog
# lokalise_rate_limit_remaining ${REMAINING}
# lokalise_rate_limit_max ${LIMIT}

Step 4: Monitor Webhook Delivery

Track webhook processing success and latency in your webhook handler.

import express from "express";

const webhookMetrics = {
  received: 0,
  processed: 0,
  failed: 0,
  totalLatencyMs: 0,
};

app.post("/webhooks/lokalise", async (req: express.Request, res: express.Response) => {
  webhookMetrics.received++;
  const start = performance.now();

  // Respond immediately — Lokalise times out after 8 seconds
  res.status(200).json({ received: true });

  try {
    await processWebhookEvent(req.body);
    webhookMetrics.processed++;
  } catch (error) {
    webhookMetrics.failed++;
    console.error("Webhook processing failed:", error);
  }

  const latencyMs = performance.now() - start;
  webhookMetrics.totalLatencyMs += latencyMs;

  emitCounter("lokalise_webhook_received_total", 1, {
    event: req.body.event,
    status: webhookMetrics.failed > 0 ? "error" : "ok",
  });
  emitHistogram("lokalise_webhook_processing_ms", latencyMs, {
    event: req.body.event,
    status: "ok",
  });
});

// Health endpoint exposing webhook metrics
app.get("/metrics/webhooks", (_req, res) => {
  res.json({
    received: webhookMetrics.received,
    processed: webhookMetrics.processed,
    failed: webhookMetrics.failed,
    avgLatencyMs: webhookMetrics.received > 0
      ? Math.round(webhookMetrics.totalLatencyMs / webhookMetrics.received)
      : 0,
  });
});

Step 5: Register Webhooks for Key Events

set -euo pipefail
# Subscribe to events that matter for pipeline monitoring
curl -s -X POST "https://api.lokalise.com/api2/projects/${LOKALISE_PROJECT_ID}/webhooks" \
  -H "X-Api-Token: ${LOKALISE_API_TOKEN}" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "url": "https://hooks.company.com/lokalise",
    "events": [
      "project.imported",
      "project.exported",
      "project.key.added",
      "project.key.modified",
      "project.translation.updated",
      "project.translation.proofread",
      "project.task.closed",
      "project.contributor.added"
    ]
  }' | jq '{webhook_id: .webhook.webhook_id, events: .webhook.events}'

Step 6: Prometheus Alerting Rules

groups:
  - name: lokalise
    rules:
      - alert: LokaliseApiRateLimited
        expr: rate(lokalise_api_requests_total{status="error", code="429"}[5m]) > 0
        for: 2m
        annotations:
          summary: "Lokalise API rate limit hit — requests being throttled"
          runbook: "Check for runaway loops. Lokalise limit is 6 req/sec per token."

      - alert: LokaliseApiErrors
        expr: rate(lokalise_api_requests_total{status="error", code=~"5.."}[10m]) > 0.1
        for: 5m
        annotations:
          summary: "Lokalise API returning 5xx errors"
          runbook: "Check https://status.lokalise.com. Enable fallback translations."

      - alert: TranslationProgressStalled
        expr: lokalise_translation_progress_pct < 80 and changes(lokalise_translation_progress_pct[24h]) == 0
        for: 24h
        annotations:
          summary: "Translation progress stalled at {{ $value }}% for 24+ hours"

      - alert: WebhookDeliveryFailing
        expr: rate(lokalise_webhook_received_total{status="error"}[1h]) > 3
        annotations:
          summary: "Lokalise webhook deliveries failing ({{ $value }} errors/hour)"

      - alert: LokaliseApiLatencyHigh
        expr: histogram_quantile(0.95, rate(lokalise_api_duration_ms_bucket[5m])) > 5000
        for: 10m
        annotations:
          summary: "Lokalise API P95 latency above 5 seconds"

Step 7: Translation Pipeline Dashboard Spec

Key panels for Grafana/Datadog:

Panel	Metric	Type
API Request Rate	rate(lokalise_api_requests_total[5m])	Time series
API Latency P50/P95	histogram_quantile(0.5/0.95, ...)	Time series
Rate Limit Remaining	lokalise_rate_limit_remaining	Gauge
Translation Progress	lokalise_translation_progress_pct by locale	Bar chart
Words Remaining	lokalise_words_to_do by locale	Bar chart
Webhook Success Rate	rate(lokalise_webhook_received_total{status="ok"}[5m])	Time series
Error Rate by Code	rate(lokalise_api_requests_total{status="error"}[5m]) by code	Stacked area

Output

• trackedApiCall() wrapper emitting duration and error metrics for every Lokalise API operation
• Translation progress gauge metrics broken down by project and locale
• Rate limit consumption monitoring via response headers
• Webhook delivery tracking with latency and error counters
• Prometheus alerting rules for rate limiting, API errors, stalled progress, and webhook failures
• Dashboard specification with 7 panels covering the full translation pipeline

Error Handling

Issue	Cause	Solution
429 Too Many Requests	Exceeded 6 req/sec rate limit	Add request throttling with p-queue
Webhook not firing	Wrong event type registered	Verify event names match API reference
Progress metric stuck at 0	Language not added to project	Add target locale in Lokalise project settings
Stale metrics	Polling interval too long	Reduce collection interval to 5 minutes
High cardinality	Too many label values	Limit operation labels to top-level SDK methods

Resources

• Lokalise Webhooks API
• Lokalise Webhook Events
• Lokalise API Rate Limits
• Lokalise Project Statistics
• Prometheus Alerting Rules
• p-queue — rate-limited request queue

Next Steps

For setting up real-time automation based on webhook events, see lokalise-webhooks-events. For incident response procedures when alerts fire, see lokalise-incident-runbook.