@sentry/tracing

What is @sentry/tracing?

The @sentry/tracing package provides performance monitoring and distributed tracing for applications. It allows developers to track the performance of their applications, understand latency issues, and monitor the flow of requests through various services in a distributed system.

What are @sentry/tracing's main functionalities?

Automatic Instrumentation

Automatically instruments the application to collect performance data. This includes capturing data for outgoing HTTP requests when using the Sentry.Integrations.Http integration.

const Sentry = require('@sentry/node');
const Tracing = require('@sentry/tracing');

Sentry.init({
  dsn: 'YOUR_DSN',
  tracesSampleRate: 1.0,
  integrations: [new Sentry.Integrations.Http({ tracing: true })],
});

Manual Instrumentation

Allows developers to manually create transactions to trace specific operations or workflows within their application.

const transaction = Sentry.startTransaction({
  op: 'test',
  name: 'My Transaction',
});

// ... your code here ...

transaction.finish();

Performance Monitoring

Integrates with web frameworks like Express to provide performance monitoring for web applications. This includes automatic tracing of requests and responses.

const express = require('express');
const app = express();
const Sentry = require('@sentry/node');
const Tracing = require('@sentry/tracing');

Sentry.init({
  dsn: 'YOUR_DSN',
  integrations: [
    new Sentry.Integrations.Http({ tracing: true }),
    new Tracing.Integrations.Express({ app }),
  ],
  tracesSampleRate: 1.0,
});

app.use(Sentry.Handlers.requestHandler());
app.use(Sentry.Handlers.tracingHandler());

// All controllers should live here

app.use(Sentry.Handlers.errorHandler());

app.listen(3000);

Distributed Tracing

Supports distributed tracing by allowing services to pass trace context in HTTP headers, enabling the tracking of requests across service boundaries.

const transaction = Sentry.startTransaction({
  op: 'http',
  name: 'My HTTP Request',
});

fetch('https://example.com', {
  method: 'GET',
  headers: {
    'Sentry-Trace': transaction.toTraceparent(),
  },
})
  .then(response => {
    // ... process the response ...
  })
  .finally(() => {
    transaction.finish();
  });

Other packages similar to @sentry/tracing

zipkin

Zipkin is a distributed tracing system that helps gather timing data needed to troubleshoot latency problems in service architectures. It has features similar to @sentry/tracing but focuses more on the tracing aspect and less on error tracking and performance monitoring.

jaeger-client

Jaeger, inspired by Dapper and OpenZipkin, is a distributed tracing system released as open source by Uber Technologies. Like @sentry/tracing, it provides monitoring and troubleshooting of microservices-based distributed systems, including distributed context propagation and transaction monitoring.

dd-trace

Datadog's APM tracing client for Node.js, dd-trace, provides distributed tracing and performance monitoring. It is similar to @sentry/tracing but is tailored to integrate with Datadog's suite of observability tools.

newrelic

New Relic's APM tool offers application performance monitoring, including transaction tracing. It provides a full-stack observability solution, which includes features for monitoring application health, user experience, and network performance, in addition to distributed tracing.

README

⚠️ Deprecation Notice: From SDK versions >= 7.47.0 onwards, the @sentry/tracing package is officially deprecated. This package will be removed in a future major release. More details can be found in the migration docs.

Sentry Tracing Extensions

Links

• Official SDK Docs
• TypeDoc

General

This package contains extensions to the @sentry/hub to enable Sentry AM related functionality. It also provides integrations for Browser and Node that provide a good experience out of the box.

Migrating from @sentry/apm to @sentry/tracing

The tracing integration for JavaScript SDKs has moved from @sentry/apm to @sentry/tracing. While the two packages are similar, some imports and APIs have changed slightly.

The old package @sentry/apm is deprecated in favor of @sentry/tracing. Future support for @sentry/apm is limited to bug fixes only.

Migrating from @sentry/apm to @sentry/tracing

Browser (CDN bundle)

If you were using the Browser CDN bundle, switch from the old bundle.apm.min.js to the new tracing bundle:

<script
  src="https://browser.sentry-cdn.com/{{ packages.version('sentry.javascript.browser') }}/bundle.tracing.min.js"
  integrity="sha384-{{ packages.checksum('sentry.javascript.browser', 'bundle.tracing.min.js', 'sha384-base64') }}"
  crossorigin="anonymous"
></script>

And then update Sentry.init:

 Sentry.init({
-  integrations: [new Sentry.Integrations.Tracing()]
+  integrations: [new Sentry.Integrations.BrowserTracing()]
 });

Browser (npm package)

If you were using automatic instrumentation, update the import statement and update Sentry.init to use the new BrowserTracing integration:

 import * as Sentry from "@sentry/browser";
-import { Integrations } from "@sentry/apm";
+import { Integrations } from "@sentry/tracing";

 Sentry.init({
   integrations: [
-    new Integrations.Tracing(),
+    new Integrations.BrowserTracing(),
   ]
 });

If you were using the beforeNavigate option from the Tracing integration, the API in BrowserTracing has changed slightly. Instead of passing in a location and returning a string representing transaction name, beforeNavigate now accepts a transaction context and is expected to return a transaction context. You can now add extra tags or change the op based on different parameters. If you want to access the location like before, you can get it from window.location.

For example, if you had a function like so that computed a custom transaction name:

import * as Sentry from "@sentry/browser";
import { Integrations } from "@sentry/apm";

Sentry.init({
  integrations: [
    new Integrations.Tracing({
      beforeNavigate: location => {
        return getTransactionName(location);
      },
    }),
  ],
});

You would now leverage the context to do the same thing:

import * as Sentry from "@sentry/browser";
import { Integrations } from "@sentry/tracing";

Sentry.init({
  integrations: [
    new Integrations.BrowserTracing({
      beforeNavigate: context => {
        return {
          ...context,
          // Can even look at context tags or other data to adjust
          // transaction name
          name: getTransactionName(window.location),
        };
      },
    }),
  ],
});

For the full diff:

 import * as Sentry from "@sentry/browser";
-import { Integrations } from "@sentry/apm";
+import { Integrations } from "@sentry/tracing";

 Sentry.init({
   integrations: [
-    new Integrations.Tracing({
-      beforeNavigate: (location) => {
-        return getTransactionName(location)
+    new Integrations.BrowserTracing({
+      beforeNavigate: (ctx) => {
+        return {
+          ...ctx,
+          name: getTransactionName(ctx.name, window.location)
+        }
       }
     }),
   ]
 });

Node

If you were using the Express integration for automatic instrumentation, the only necessary change is to update the import statement:

 import * as Sentry from "@sentry/node";
-import { Integrations } from "@sentry/apm";
+import { Integrations } from "@sentry/tracing";

 Sentry.init({
   integrations: [
     new Integrations.Express(),
   ]
 });