Otlp-node-tracer

A wrapper implementation to auto instrument a distributed Node JS application using Opentelemetry.

ENV required

TRACE_COLLECTOR_ENDPOINT should contain the endpoint of the deployed collector. Default is as below.

SERVICE_TRACING_NAME="testing-service-name"
TRACE_COLLECTOR_ENDPOINT=http://localhost:4317

How to start tracing

Edit the script in package json which is used to start the application, in most cases it will a start script something like below

"start": "node index.js"

Replace the above with

"start": "node -r ./node_modules/otlp-node-tracer/OTLP_TRACER.js index.js"

The above will automatically start tracing the node js application using OTLP trace exporter.

Analyze the traces

In order to collect the traces and analyze them, it requires a collector to be running and sending the trace to tracing backed of our choice. Tested the above with grafana agent and jaeger collector using grafana tempo as the tracing backend.