Add support for excluding specific network requests (by URL/domain) from instrumentation

[msaqib-mizmiz]

Summary

The New Relic iOS SDK currently instruments all network requests made by the app or none if disabled globally. There is no public API or configuration to exclude specific requests based on URL patterns or domains from being tracked.

Desired Behavior

Provide a public API or configuration option that allows developers to exclude network requests from instrumentation based on matching URL patterns or domains. For example, developers should be able to specify regex patterns or domain strings to prevent New Relic from tracking those requests, while continuing to monitor the rest of the app’s network activity.

Possible Solution

Implement a URL filter callback or a URL exclusion regex list that is evaluated before instrumentation hooks are applied. This would allow the SDK to ignore specific requests entirely rather than just transform their URLs.
Alternatively, extend or repurpose existing mechanisms like setURLRegexRules to support exclusion/filtering, not just URL transformation.

Additional context

Amazon IVSPlayer makes numerous HTTP requests to streaming CDN domains (e.g., *.cloudfront.hls.live-video.net and *.playlist.live-video.net) which pollute the network monitoring data and increase noise in New Relic dashboards. Being able to exclude these would help focus analytics on meaningful app network traffic and reduce overhead.

[cdillard-NewRelic]

Thank you for requesting this feature. I've let our product manager know and we'll add it in a future release.