Getting Started

This guide explains how to use traces for tracing code execution.

Installation

Add the gem to your project:

$ bundle add traces

Core Concepts

traces has several core concepts:

A module Traces::Provider which implements custom logic for wrapping existing code in traces.
A class Traces::Context which represents the current tracing environment which can include distributed tracing.
A module Traces::Backend which connects traces to a specific backend system for processing.

Usage

There are two main aspects to integrating within this gem.

Libraries and applications must provide traces.
Those traces must be consumed or emitted somewhere.

Providing Traces

Adding tracing to libraries requires the use of module Traces::Provider:

require 'traces'

class MyClass
	def my_method
		puts "Hello World"
	end
end

# If tracing is disabled, this is a no-op.
Traces::Provider(MyClass) do
	def my_method
		attributes = {
			'foo' => 'bar'
		}
		
		Traces.trace('my_method', attributes: attributes) do
			super
		end
	end
end

MyClass.new.my_method

This code by itself will not create any traces. In order to execute it and output traces, you must set up a backend to consume them.

In addition, to trace class methods:

require 'traces'

class MyClass
	def self.my_method
		puts "Hello World"
	end
end

# If tracing is disabled, this is a no-op.
Traces::Provider(MyClass.singleton_class) do
	def my_method
		attributes = {
			'foo' => 'bar'
		}
		
		Traces.trace('my_method', attributes: attributes) do
			super
		end
	end
end

MyClass.my_method

Consuming Traces

Consuming traces means proving a backend implementation which can emit those traces to some log or service. There are several options, but two backends are included by default:

traces/backend/test does not emit any traces, but validates the usage of the tracing interface.
traces/backend/console emits traces using the console gem.

In order to use a specific backend, set the TRACES_BACKEND environment variable, e.g.

$ TRACES_BACKEND=traces/backend/console ./my_script.rb

Separate implementations are provided for specific APMs: