PHP zero-code instrumentation
Requirements
Automatic instrumentation with PHP requires:
- PHP 8.0 or higher
- OpenTelemetry PHP extension
- Composer autoloading
- OpenTelemetry SDK
- One or more instrumentation libraries
- Configuration
Important
Installing the OpenTelemetry extension by itself does not generate traces.Install the OpenTelemetry extension
The extension can be installed via pecl, pickle or php-extension-installer (docker specific). There are also packaged versions of the extension available for some Linux package managers.
Linux packages
RPM and APK packages are provided by the following:
- Remi repository - RPM
- Alpine Linux - APK (currently in the testing branch)
#this example is for CentOS 7. The PHP version can be changed by
#enabling remi-<version>, eg "yum config-manager --enable remi-php83"
yum update -y
yum install -y epel-release yum-utils
yum install -y http://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/remi-release-7.rpm
yum-config-manager --enable remi-php81
yum install -y php php-pecl-opentelemetry
php --ri opentelemetry
#At the time of writing, PHP 8.1 was the default PHP version. You may need to
#change "php81" if the default changes. You can alternatively choose a PHP
#version with "apk add php<version>", eg "apk add php83".
echo "@testing https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/testing" >> /etc/apk/repositories
apk add php php81-pecl-opentelemetry@testing
php --ri opentelemetry
PECL
Setup development environment. Installing from source requires proper development environment and some dependencies:
sudo apt-get install gcc make autoconf
brew install gcc make autoconf
Build/install the extension. With your environment set up you can install the extension:
pecl install opentelemetry
php pickle.phar install opentelemetry
install-php-extensions opentelemetry
Add the extension to your
php.ini
file:[opentelemetry] extension=opentelemetry.so
Verify that the extension is installed and enabled:
php -m | grep opentelemetry
Install SDK and instrumentation libraries
Now that the extension is installed, install the OpenTelemetry SDK and one or more instrumentation libraries.
Automatic instrumentation is available for a number commonly used PHP libraries. For the full list, see instrumentation libraries on packagist.
Let’s assume that your application uses Slim Framework and a PSR-18 HTTP client. You would then install the SDK and corresponding auto-instrumentation packages for these:
composer require \
open-telemetry/sdk \
open-telemetry/opentelemetry-auto-slim \
open-telemetry/opentelemetry-auto-psr18
Configuration
When used in conjunction with the OpenTelemetry SDK, you can use environment
variables or the php.ini
file to configure auto-instrumentation.
Environment configuration
OTEL_PHP_AUTOLOAD_ENABLED=true \
OTEL_SERVICE_NAME=your-service-name \
OTEL_TRACES_EXPORTER=otlp \
OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_PROTOCOL=grpc \
OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=http://collector:4317 \
OTEL_PROPAGATORS=baggage,tracecontext \
php myapp.php
php.ini configuration
Append the following to php.ini
, or another ini
file that will be processed
by PHP:
OTEL_PHP_AUTOLOAD_ENABLED=true
OTEL_SERVICE_NAME=your-service-name
OTEL_TRACES_EXPORTER=otlp
OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_PROTOCOL=grpc
OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=http://collector:4317
OTEL_PROPAGATORS=baggage,tracecontext
Run your application
After all of the above is installed and configured, start your application as you normally would.
The traces you see exported to the OpenTelemetry Collector depend on the instrumentation libraries you have installed, and the code path that was taken inside the application. In the previous example, using Slim Framework and PSR-18 instrumentation libraries, you should expect to see spans such as:
- A root span representing the HTTP transaction
- A span for the action that was executed
- A span for each HTTP transaction that the PSR-18 client sent
Note that the PSR-18 client instrumentation appends distributed tracing headers to outgoing HTTP requests.
How it works
Optional
You can skip over this section if you just want to get up and running quickly, and there are suitable instrumentation libraries for your application.The extension enables registering observer functions as PHP code against classes and methods, and executing those functions before and after the observed method runs.
If there is not an instrumentation library for your framework or application, you can write your own. The following example provides some code to be instrumented, and then illustrates how to use the OpenTelemetry extension to trace the execution of that code.
<?php
use OpenTelemetry\API\Common\Instrumentation\CachedInstrumentation;
use OpenTelemetry\API\Trace\Span;
use OpenTelemetry\API\Trace\StatusCode;
use OpenTelemetry\Context\Context;
require 'vendor/autoload.php';
/* The class to be instrumented */
class DemoClass
{
public function run(): void
{
echo 'Hello, world';
}
}
/* The auto-instrumentation code */
OpenTelemetry\Instrumentation\hook(
class: DemoClass::class,
function: 'run',
pre: static function (DemoClass $demo, array $params, string $class, string $function, ?string $filename, ?int $lineno) {
static $instrumentation;
$instrumentation ??= new CachedInstrumentation('example');
$span = $instrumentation->tracer()->spanBuilder('democlass-run')->startSpan();
Context::storage()->attach($span->storeInContext(Context::getCurrent()));
},
post: static function (DemoClass $demo, array $params, $returnValue, ?Throwable $exception) {
$scope = Context::storage()->scope();
$scope->detach();
$span = Span::fromContext($scope->context());
if ($exception) {
$span->recordException($exception);
$span->setStatus(StatusCode::STATUS_ERROR);
}
$span->end();
}
);
/* Run the instrumented code, which will generate a trace */
$demo = new DemoClass();
$demo->run();
The previous example defines DemoClass
, then registers pre
and post
hook
functions on its run
method. The hook functions run before and after each
execution of the DemoClass::run()
method. The pre
function starts and
activates a span, while the post
function ends it.
If DemoClass::run()
throws an exception, the post
function records it
without affecting exception propagation.
Next steps
After you have automatic instrumentation configured for your app or service, you might want to add manual instrumentation to collect custom telemetry data.
For more examples, see opentelemetry-php-contrib/examples.
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