EDOT Node.js

The Elastic Distribution of OpenTelemetry Node.js (EDOT Node.js) is a lightweight wrapper around the OpenTelemetry SDK for Node.js that makes it easy to get started using OpenTelemetry in your Node.js applications, especially if you are using Elastic Observability as your observability solution.

1# Install it
2npm install --save @elastic/opentelemetry-node
3
4# Configure it
5export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT="...your-OTLP/collector-endpoint..."
6export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_HEADERS="Authorization=..."
7export OTEL_SERVICE_NAME="my-app"
8
9# Start it with your application
10node --import @elastic/opentelemetry-node my-app.js

See the EDOT Node.js docs for details. Some direct links:

• Get started
• Configuration
• Changelog
• Elastic Discuss forum | GitHub issue tracker

How does EDOT Node.js differ from the OpenTelemetry JS SDK?

EDOT Node.js is very similar to the @opentelemetry/auto-instrumentations-node package from OpenTelemetry in its usage goal: a single-dependency that provides a simple path to zero-code instrumentation of Node.js applications. In general, Elastic's goal is to contribute all SDK improvements upstream. That said, there are sometimes differences that are specific to Elastic (e.g. talking to an Elastic service for central configuration, Elastic-authored additional instrumentations). Here is a concise list of differences:

• EDOT Node.js includes the additional, Elastic-authored @elastic/opentelemetry-instrumentation-openai instrumentation for the OpenAI Node.js client library.
• EDOT Node.js, being a distribution of the OpenTelemetry JS SDK, always adds the telemetry.distro.* resource attributes to identify itself.
• EDOT Node.js enables some metrics by default that are not included by @opentelemetry/auto-instrumentations-node: a subset of metrics from @opentelemetry/host-metrics and the metrics from @opentelemetry/instrumentation-runtime-node.
• EDOT Node.js defaults to OTEL_SEMCONV_STABILITY_OPT_IN=http such that telemetry from the @opentelemetry/instrumentation-http package will use stable HTTP semantic conventions by default. Upstream OpenTelemetry JS currently has a PR that will change to the same behavior soon.
• EDOT Node.js defaults to OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_METRICS_TEMPORALITY_PREFERENCE=delta, which differs from the upstream OpenTelemetry JS default of cumulative.
• EDOT Node.js uses the more recent import-in-the-middle createAddHookMessageChannel feature for improved ESM support. We hope to upstream support for this.
• Internal diagnostic logging from EDOT Node.js is in a custom JSON-log format, rather than the message-string-only format from OpenTelemetry JS. diag logging in (luggite) JSON format
• EDOT Node.js does not include GCP resource detector due to an issue that causes the HTTP instrumentation to send spans from the detector as if they were from the instrumented service. This causes the UI to show wrong info and errors nonn related to the service.