OpenTelemetry express Instrumentation for Node.js

This module provide enhanced instrumentation for the express web framework.

Installation

npm install --save opentelemetry-instrumentation-express

Supported Versions

This instrumentation supports ^4.9.0:

all versions >= 4.9.0 (released 2014) and < 5.0.0 (in alpha).

Usage

For further automatic instrumentation instruction see the @opentelemetry/instrumentation package.

1const { NodeTracerProvider } = require('@opentelemetry/sdk-trace-node');
2const { registerInstrumentations } = require('@opentelemetry/instrumentation');
3const { ExpressInstrumentation } = require('opentelemetry-instrumentation-express');
4
5const tracerProvider = new NodeTracerProvider();
6tracerProvider.register();
7
8registerInstrumentations({
9  tracerProvider,
10  instrumentations: [
11    new ExpressInstrumentation()
12  ]
13});

Express Instrumentation Options

Express instrumentation has few options available to choose from. You can set the following:

Options	Type	Description
requestHook	RequestHook (function)	Hook for adding custom attributes before express start handling the request. Receives params: span, { moduleVersion, req, res }
includeHttpAttributes	boolean	If set to true, plugin will include semantic http attributes in each express span

Semantic Behavior

Express auto instrumentation will create a single span per request with the following attributes. Detailed specification and cases can be found here.

http.route

This is a conventional http attribute, which is collected by express instead of the http module (which is not aware of the route). It will always contain path-parameterized data with low cardinality (no ids), but might be missing parts of the path in case of early termination or middlewares that accept any path.

Example: /api/users/:id

express.route.full

This attribute will always contain the entire path. The part of the path that has been consumed by express will be shown as is (parameterized), and the leftover will be concatenated after (due to early termination or middleware that accept any path).

Example: /api/users/:id/books/758734 (The :id part was consumed, but the bookid part was not).

express.route.configured

This attribute is relevant when user configures multi path options for the same middleware. It reduces even further the cardinality space compared to http.route, and supply more info about how the app routing works.

Example: /api["/foo", /"bar"] - meaning that the same endpoint is triggered by routes /api/foo and /api/bar.

express.route.params

This attribute holds a json stringified map, where the keys are the url path param names, and the values are the matched params from the actual url.

Example: {"id":"1234"}.

express.unhandled

Set to true when request was not handled by any middleware in express, and got fallback to the default app finalhandler. This can happen if client sent request with invalid path or method (resulting in 404). This can be useful to filter out requests from internet bots which try to call common routes on servers.

express.instrumentation.errors

In case of internal error in instrumentation, this attribute will contain the error description. There are no known valid use cases which are expected to produce this attribute.

Difference from @opentelemetry/instrumentation-express

• This instrumentation is focusing on extracting the most accurate and complete route data, in any valid express edge case. Contrib instrumentation does a good job for common cases, but miss nuances on complex setups.
• This instrumentation create a single span per request. Contrib instrumentation creates span per express Router/Route, which can be useful to observe express internal components, with the cost of more spans in each trace.
• Set few alternatives for route attribute, each with different level of cardinality vs accuracy.
• Allows to set requestHook for adding custom attributes to span, as well as ability to capture express version into user defined attribute.
• Distinguish between handled requests (ended from user middleware), and unhandled (terminated from express built in 'finalhandler').
• Option to conform with the Semantic conventions for HTTP spans.

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This extension (and many others) was developed by Aspecto with ❤️