Using OpenTelemetry with Node.js

You can enable Cloud Trace for Node.js applications by using OpenTelemetry. OpenTelemetry is a set of instrumentation libraries for collecting trace and metric data that work with multiple backends. For the latest details about OpenTelemetry for Node.js, along with additional documentation and examples, go to https://opentelemetry.io/.

Installation and configuration

To collect traces, you need to do the following:

  • Install the OpenTelemetry client libraries.
  • Import the OpenTelemetry trace packages.
  • Configure OpenTelemetry to export spans to Cloud Trace.
  • Enable the Cloud Trace API access scope.

Installing, initializing, and using the client

OpenTelemetry offers three ways to instrument your application:

  • Auto-instrumentation for Node.js applications
  • Manual tracing
  • Auto-instrumentation for web applications

The following sections show the use case for each instrumentation.

Auto-instrumentation

The @opentelemetry/node module provides auto-instrumentation for Node.js applications.

Auto-instrumentation automatically identifies the following within your application:

  • Frameworks, such as Express
  • Common protocols, such as HTTP, HTTPS, and gRPC
  • Databases, such as MySQL, MongoDB, Redis, and PostgreSQL
  • Other libraries within your application

Auto-instrumentation provides ready-to-use tracing, so you don't have to make code changes to any of the libraries you're using. The instrumentation code automatically performs the following actions:

  • Extracts a trace-context identifier from inbound requests to allow distributed tracing, if applicable.
  • Guarantees that the current trace-context is propagated while the transaction traverses an application. For an in-depth explanation, see @opentelemetry/context-base.
  • Adds the trace-context identifier to outbound requests, allowing the distributed trace to continue to the next hop, if applicable.
  • Creates and ends spans.

The module uses plugins to automatically instrument your application to produce spans and provide end-to-end tracing with just a few lines of code.

Manual instrumentation

The manual tracing module, @opentelemetry/tracing, provides complete control over instrumentation and span creation. It doesn't load async_hooks. It doesn't use continuation-local storage or any instrumentation plugin by default. Manual tracing has less performance overhead implications compared to the auto-instrumentation module.

Auto-instrumentation for web applications

The @opentelemetry/web module provides automated instrumentation and tracing for web applications. It collects user-side performance data, including latency and distributed traces, which gives you the information to diagnose front-end issues and monitor overall application status.

The following instructions show how to use the auto-instrumentation module for Compute Engine and Google Kubernetes Engine.

Compute Engine

Install the following packages:

npm install --save @opentelemetry/api
npm install --save @opentelemetry/node
npm install --save @opentelemetry/tracing
npm install --save @google-cloud/opentelemetry-cloud-trace-exporter

Add the following code to your app to initialize and register the exporter:

const opentelemetry = require('@opentelemetry/api');
const {NodeTracerProvider} = require('@opentelemetry/node');
const {SimpleSpanProcessor} = require('@opentelemetry/tracing');
const { TraceExporter } = require('@google-cloud/opentelemetry-cloud-trace-exporter');
// Enable OpenTelemetry exporters to export traces to Google Cloud Trace.
// Exporters use Application Default Credentials (ADCs) to authenticate.
// See https://developers.google.com/identity/protocols/application-default-credentials
// for more details.
const provider = new NodeTracerProvider();

// Initialize the exporter. When your application is running on Google Cloud,
// you don't need to provide auth credentials or a project id.
const exporter = new TraceExporter();

// Configure the span processor to send spans to the exporter
provider.addSpanProcessor(new SimpleSpanProcessor(exporter));

GKE

Add the following to the Dockerfile:

RUN npm install --save @opentelemetry/api
RUN npm install --save @opentelemetry/node
RUN npm install --save @opentelemetry/tracing
RUN npm install --save @google-cloud/opentelemetry-cloud-trace-exporter

Add the following code to your app to initialize and register the exporter:

const opentelemetry = require('@opentelemetry/api');
const {NodeTracerProvider} = require('@opentelemetry/node');
const {SimpleSpanProcessor} = require('@opentelemetry/tracing');
const { TraceExporter } = require('@google-cloud/opentelemetry-cloud-trace-exporter');
// Enable OpenTelemetry exporters to export traces to Google Cloud Trace.
// Exporters use Application Default Credentials (ADCs) to authenticate.
// See https://developers.google.com/identity/protocols/application-default-credentials
// for more details.
const provider = new NodeTracerProvider();

// Initialize the exporter. When your application is running on Google Cloud,
// you don't need to provide auth credentials or a project id.
const exporter = new TraceExporter();

// Configure the span processor to send spans to the exporter
provider.addSpanProcessor(new SimpleSpanProcessor(exporter));

Sample application using the Express framework

OpenTelemetry Express Instrumentation (@opentelemetry/plugin-http and @opentelemetry/plugin-express) lets you automatically collect trace data and export it to your backend of choice, giving you observability to distributed systems.

To use OpenTelemetry for applications that use the Express framework, complete the following steps:

  1. Install the following packages:

    npm install --save @opentelemetry/plugin-http
npm install --save @opentelemetry/plugin-express

  2. Add the following code to your app, which loads all the supported plugins:

    const { NodeTracerProvider } = require('@opentelemetry/node');
const provider = new NodeTracerProvider();

For a basic example, see the OpenTelemetry Express example.

Creating a custom span

You can add additional information to the system-created trace by creating a custom span.

To create a custom span, add the following to the source code:


// Initialize the OpenTelemetry APIs to use the
// NodeTracerProvider bindings
opentelemetry.trace.setGlobalTracerProvider(provider);
const tracer = opentelemetry.trace.getTracer('basic');

// Create a span.
const span = tracer.startSpan('foo');

// Set attributes to the span.
span.setAttribute('key', 'value');

// Annotate our span to capture metadata about our operation
span.addEvent('invoking work');

// simulate some random work.
for (let i = 0; i <= Math.floor(Math.random() * 40000000); i += 1) { }

// Be sure to end the span.
span.end();

  • getTracer returns an instance of tracer, where basic is the name of the tracer or the instrumentation library. This tells OpenTelemetry who is creating spans.

  • foo is the name of the custom span.

  • invoking work is the name of the sample event. This shows how to use addEvent API.

For a basic example of creating a custom span, see the OpenTelemetry example.

Configuring your platform

You can use Cloud Trace on Google Cloud and other platforms.

Running on Google Cloud

When your application is running on Google Cloud, you don't need to provide authentication credentials in the form of a service account to the client library. However, you do need to ensure that your Google Cloud platform has the Cloud Trace API access scope enabled.

For the following configurations, the default access-scope settings enable the Cloud Trace API:

  • App Engine flexible environment

  • App Engine standard environment

  • Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)

  • Compute Engine

If you use custom access scopes, then you must ensure that Cloud Trace API access scope is enabled. For gcloud users, specify access scopes using the --scopes flag and include the trace.append Cloud Trace API access scope. For example, to create a GKE cluster with only the Cloud Trace API enabled, do the following:

gcloud container clusters create example-cluster-name --scopes=https://www.googleapis.com/auth/trace.append

Running locally and elsewhere

If your application is running outside of Google Cloud, then you must provide authentication credentials in the form of a service account to the client library. The service account must contain the Cloud Trace agent role. For instructions, see Creating a service account.

Google Cloud client libraries use Application Default Credentials (ADC) to find your application's credentials. You provide these credentials by setting the GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS environment variable:

Linux/macOS

    export GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS=path-to-your-service-accounts-private-key

Windows

    set GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS=path-to-your-service-accounts-private-key

PowerShell:

    $env:GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS="path-to-your-service-accounts-private-key"

Viewing the traces

After deployment, you can view the traces in the Cloud Console Trace Viewer.

Go to the Trace Viewer page

Troubleshooting

For information on troubleshooting issues with Cloud Trace, go to the Troubleshooting page.