From e7fdabc7fad1f9351f2518002faea658f392b85e Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Ronish Bhatt <16808243+sunmoonron@users.noreply.github.com>
Date: Mon, 7 Sep 2026 18:51:56 -0400
Subject: [PATCH] metrics: count EVENT messages that fail validation, document
 what nostr_events_total counts

README said nostr_events_total counts events processed while the metric's
HELP text and RelayWriter say persisted; the README now matches the code
(issue #255). Events that fail validation in the ingester were not counted
anywhere; they now increment a new strfry_invalid_events_total counter,
leaving strfry_write_rejected_total's meaning (rejected during write) as is.
---
 README.md                        | 2 +-
 src/PrometheusMetrics.h          | 5 +++++
 src/apps/relay/RelayIngester.cpp | 1 +
 3 files changed, 7 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 1510917e..31ca9c36 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -257,7 +257,7 @@ The following metrics are available:
 
 * **`nostr_client_messages_total{verb}`** - Total number of messages received from clients, broken down by verb (EVENT, REQ, CLOSE, NEG-OPEN, NEG-MSG, NEG-CLOSE)
 * **`nostr_relay_messages_total{verb}`** - Total number of messages sent to clients, broken down by verb (EVENT, OK, EOSE, NOTICE, NEG-MSG, NEG-ERR)
-* **`nostr_events_total{kind}`** - Total number of events processed, broken down by event kind (0, 1, 3, 4, etc.)
+* **`nostr_events_total{kind}`** - Total number of events persisted to the DB, broken down by event kind (0, 1, 3, 4, etc.). Rejected and duplicate events are not counted here; see `strfry_write_rejected_total`, `strfry_write_dups_total` and `strfry_invalid_events_total`
 
 To scrape these metrics with Prometheus, add a job to your `prometheus.yml`:
 
diff --git a/src/PrometheusMetrics.h b/src/PrometheusMetrics.h
index ff092299..2075cac0 100644
--- a/src/PrometheusMetrics.h
+++ b/src/PrometheusMetrics.h
@@ -101,6 +101,7 @@ class PrometheusMetrics {
     // Write path performance metrics
     Counter writtenEventsTotal;
     Counter rejectedEventsTotal;
+    Counter invalidEventsTotal;  // EVENT messages that failed validation before reaching the writer
     Counter dupEventsTotal;
     Counter writeTimeUs;  // total microseconds spent in write transactions
     Gauge lastWriteBatchSize;
@@ -152,6 +153,10 @@ class PrometheusMetrics {
         out << "# TYPE strfry_write_rejected_total counter\n";
         out << "strfry_write_rejected_total " << rejectedEventsTotal.get() << "\n";
 
+        out << "# HELP strfry_invalid_events_total Total EVENT messages rejected before the write path because they failed validation\n";
+        out << "# TYPE strfry_invalid_events_total counter\n";
+        out << "strfry_invalid_events_total " << invalidEventsTotal.get() << "\n";
+
         out << "# HELP strfry_write_dups_total Total duplicate events skipped\n";
         out << "# TYPE strfry_write_dups_total counter\n";
         out << "strfry_write_dups_total " << dupEventsTotal.get() << "\n";
diff --git a/src/apps/relay/RelayIngester.cpp b/src/apps/relay/RelayIngester.cpp
index 9a5e0009..59f8a02e 100644
--- a/src/apps/relay/RelayIngester.cpp
+++ b/src/apps/relay/RelayIngester.cpp
@@ -33,6 +33,7 @@ void RelayServer::runIngester(ThreadPool<MsgIngester>::Thread &thr) {
                             try {
                                 ingesterProcessEvent(txn, rsctx, msg->connId, msg->ipAddr, arr[1], writerMsgs);
                             } catch (std::exception &e) {
+                                PrometheusMetrics::getInstance().invalidEventsTotal.inc();
                                 sendOKResponse(msg->connId, arr[1].is_object() && arr[1].at("id").is_string() ? arr[1].at("id").get_string() : "?",
                                                false, std::string("invalid: ") + e.what());
                                 if (cfg().relay__logging__invalidEvents) LI << "Rejected invalid event: " << e.what();