# Exposing request start time as a variable to use in a custom header

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/exposing-request-start-time-as-a-variable-to-use-in-a-custom-header/220368>\
**Category:** NGINX\
**Created:** [June 7, 2012, 4:49am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/exposing-request-start-time-as-a-variable-to-use-in-a-custom-header/220368 "2012-06-07T04:49:39Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![aris](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/258eb7/32.png) [@aris](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/aris)\
**Post date:** [June 7, 2012, 4:49am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/exposing-request-start-time-as-a-variable-to-use-in-a-custom-header/220368/1 "2012-06-07T04:49:39Z")

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Hi,

I’m using New Relic RPM for performance profiling and they have an  
optional metric for time spent in request queueing. In order to  
compute this metric, they require that the frontend server add an  
X-QUEUE-START request header with a timestamp in microseconds before  
handing the request off to the application. There are a couple of  
patches floating around that add this ability to various versions of  
nginx.

I’m wondering if this or something similar might be considered for  
inclusion in a future official release of nginx.

Details about the New Relic feature:  
[https://newrelic.com/docs/features/tracking-front-end-time](https://newrelic.com/docs/features/tracking-front-end-time)

The currently available patches:

> <https://gist.github.com/rkbodenner/318681>

Thanks!

JD