@opentelemetry/instrumentation-http

What is @opentelemetry/instrumentation-http?

The @opentelemetry/instrumentation-http package is part of the OpenTelemetry project, which provides a collection of tools, APIs, and SDKs to instrument, generate, collect, and export telemetry data (metrics, logs, and traces) to help you analyze your software's performance and behavior. This specific package provides automatic instrumentation for HTTP and HTTPS requests in Node.js applications, allowing developers to capture detailed information about incoming and outgoing requests.

What are @opentelemetry/instrumentation-http's main functionalities?

Automatic Tracing of HTTP Requests

This feature automatically traces all HTTP and HTTPS requests made or received by your application. The code sample initializes a NodeTracerProvider, registers it, and then enables the HTTP instrumentation to start tracing HTTP requests.

const { NodeTracerProvider } = require('@opentelemetry/node');
const { HttpInstrumentation } = require('@opentelemetry/instrumentation-http');

const provider = new NodeTracerProvider();
provider.register();

const httpInstrumentation = new HttpInstrumentation();
httpInstrumentation.enable();

Configurable Instrumentation

This feature allows developers to configure which requests should be ignored by the instrumentation. In the code sample, the instrumentation is configured to ignore incoming requests to '/healthz' and outgoing requests to 'example.com'.

const { HttpInstrumentation } = require('@opentelemetry/instrumentation-http');
const httpInstrumentation = new HttpInstrumentation({
  ignoreIncomingPaths: [ /healthz/ ],
  ignoreOutgoingUrls: [ /example.com/ ]
});
httpInstrumentation.enable();

Other packages similar to @opentelemetry/instrumentation-http

dd-trace

dd-trace is a DataDog tracing library that also provides automatic instrumentation for HTTP requests among other integrations. It is similar to @opentelemetry/instrumentation-http but is specifically tailored for integration with DataDog's monitoring and analytics platform, whereas OpenTelemetry provides vendor-neutral instrumentation.

README

OpenTelemetry HTTP and HTTPS Instrumentation for Node.js

Note: This is an experimental package under active development. New releases may include breaking changes.

This module provides automatic instrumentation for http and https.

For automatic instrumentation see the @opentelemetry/sdk-trace-node package.

Installation

npm install --save @opentelemetry/instrumentation-http

Supported Versions

• Nodejs >=14

Usage

OpenTelemetry HTTP Instrumentation allows the user to automatically collect telemetry and export it to their backend of choice, to give observability to distributed systems.

To load a specific instrumentation (HTTP in this case), specify it in the Node Tracer's configuration.

const { HttpInstrumentation } = require('@opentelemetry/instrumentation-http');
const {
  ConsoleSpanExporter,
  NodeTracerProvider,
  SimpleSpanProcessor,
} = require('@opentelemetry/sdk-trace-node');
const { registerInstrumentations } = require('@opentelemetry/instrumentation');

const provider = new NodeTracerProvider({
  spanProcessors: [new SimpleSpanProcessor(new ConsoleSpanExporter())]
});

provider.register();

registerInstrumentations({
  instrumentations: [new HttpInstrumentation()],
});

See examples/http for a short example.

Http instrumentation Options

Http instrumentation has a few configuration options available to choose from. You can set the following:

Options	Type	Description
applyCustomAttributesOnSpan	HttpCustomAttributeFunction	Function for adding custom attributes
requestHook	HttpRequestCustomAttributeFunction	Function for adding custom attributes before request is handled
responseHook	HttpResponseCustomAttributeFunction	Function for adding custom attributes before response is handled
startIncomingSpanHook	StartIncomingSpanCustomAttributeFunction	Function for adding custom attributes before a span is started in incomingRequest
startOutgoingSpanHook	StartOutgoingSpanCustomAttributeFunction	Function for adding custom attributes before a span is started in outgoingRequest
ignoreIncomingRequestHook	IgnoreIncomingRequestFunction	Http instrumentation will not trace all incoming requests that matched with custom function
ignoreOutgoingRequestHook	IgnoreOutgoingRequestFunction	Http instrumentation will not trace all outgoing requests that matched with custom function
disableOutgoingRequestInstrumentation	boolean	Set to true to avoid instrumenting outgoing requests at all. This can be helpful when another instrumentation handles outgoing requests.
disableIncomingRequestInstrumentation	boolean	Set to true to avoid instrumenting incoming requests at all. This can be helpful when another instrumentation handles incoming requests.
serverName	string	The primary server name of the matched virtual host.
requireParentforOutgoingSpans	Boolean	Require that is a parent span to create new span for outgoing requests.
requireParentforIncomingSpans	Boolean	Require that is a parent span to create new span for incoming requests.
headersToSpanAttributes	object	List of case insensitive HTTP headers to convert to span attributes. Client (outgoing requests, incoming responses) and server (incoming requests, outgoing responses) headers will be converted to span attributes in the form of http.{request|response}.header.header_name, e.g. http.response.header.content_length

Semantic Conventions

Prior to version 0.54.0, this instrumentation created spans targeting an experimental semantic convention Version 1.7.0.

HTTP semantic conventions (semconv) were stabilized in v1.23.0, and a migration process was defined. instrumentation-http versions 0.54.0 and later include support for migrating to stable HTTP semantic conventions, as described below. The intent is to provide an approximate 6 month time window for users of this instrumentation to migrate to the new HTTP semconv, after which a new minor version will use the new semconv by default and drop support for the old semconv. See the HTTP semconv migration plan for OpenTelemetry JS instrumentations.

To select which semconv version(s) is emitted from this instrumentation, use the OTEL_SEMCONV_STABILITY_OPT_IN environment variable.

• http: emit the new (stable) v1.23.0+ semantics
• http/dup: emit both the old v1.7.0 and the new (stable) v1.23.0+ semantics
• By default, if OTEL_SEMCONV_STABILITY_OPT_IN includes neither of the above tokens, the old v1.7.0 semconv is used.

Attributes collected

v1.7.0 semconv	v1.23.0 semconv	Short Description
http.client_ip	client.address	The IP address of the original client behind all proxies, if known
http.flavor	network.protocol.version	Kind of HTTP protocol used
http.host	server.address	The value of the HTTP host header
http.method	http.request.method	HTTP request method
http.request_content_length	(opt-in, headersToSpanAttributes)	The size of the request payload body in bytes. For newer semconv, use the headersToSpanAttributes: option to capture this as http.request.header.content_length.
http.request_content_length_uncompressed	(not included)	The size of the uncompressed request payload body after transport decoding. (In semconv v1.23.0 this is defined by http.request.body.size, which is experimental and opt-in.)
http.response_content_length	(opt-in, headersToSpanAttributes)	The size of the response payload body in bytes. For newer semconv, use the headersToSpanAttributes: option to capture this as http.response.header.content_length.
http.response_content_length_uncompressed	(not included)	The size of the uncompressed response payload body after transport decoding. (In semconv v1.23.0 this is defined by http.response.body.size, which is experimental and opt-in.)
http.route	no change	The matched route (path template).
http.scheme	url.scheme	The URI scheme identifying the used protocol
http.server_name	server.address	The primary server name of the matched virtual host
http.status_code	http.response.status_code	HTTP response status code
http.target	url.path and url.query	The URI path and query component
http.url	url.full	Full HTTP request URL in the form scheme://host[:port]/path?query[#fragment]
http.user_agent	user_agent.original	Value of the HTTP User-Agent header sent by the client
net.host.ip	network.local.address	Like net.peer.ip but for the host IP. Useful in case of a multi-IP host
net.host.name	server.address	Local hostname or similar
net.host.port	server.port	Like net.peer.port but for the host port
net.peer.ip.	network.peer.address	Remote address of the peer (dotted decimal for IPv4 or RFC5952 for IPv6)
net.peer.name	server.address	Server domain name if available without reverse DNS lookup
net.peer.port	server.port	Server port number
net.transport	network.transport	Transport protocol used

Metrics Exported:

• http.server.request.duration
• http.client.request.duration

Upgrading Semantic Conventions

When upgrading to the new semantic conventions, it is recommended to do so in the following order:

• Upgrade @opentelemetry/instrumentation-http to the latest version
• Set OTEL_SEMCONV_STABILITY_OPT_IN=http/dup to emit both old and new semantic conventions
• Modify alerts, dashboards, metrics, and other processes to expect the new semantic conventions
• Set OTEL_SEMCONV_STABILITY_OPT_IN=http to emit only the new semantic conventions

This will cause both the old and new semantic conventions to be emitted during the transition period.

Useful links

• For more information on OpenTelemetry, visit: https://opentelemetry.io/
• For more about OpenTelemetry JavaScript: https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-js
• For help or feedback on this project, join us in GitHub Discussions

License

Apache 2.0 - See LICENSE for more information.