Dynamic Instrumentation is a feature of supporting Datadog tracing libraries. If you are already using APM to collect traces for your application, ensure your Agent and tracing library are on the required version. Then, go directly to enabling Dynamic Instrumentation in step 4.

Installation

1. Install or upgrade your Agent to version 7.45.0 or higher.
2. If you don’t already have APM enabled, in your Agent configuration, set the DD_APM_ENABLED environment variable to true and listening to the port 8126/TCP.
3. Install or upgrade the Node.js tracing library to version 5.39.0 or higher, by following the relevant instructions.
4. If your source code is transpiled during deployment (for example, if using TypeScript), ensure that source maps are published along with the deployed Node.js application.
5. Run your service with Dynamic Instrumentation enabled by setting the DD_DYNAMIC_INSTRUMENTATION_ENABLED environment variable to true. Specify DD_SERVICE, DD_ENV, and DD_VERSION Unified Service Tags so you can filter and group your instrumentations and target active clients across these dimensions.
6. After starting your service with Dynamic Instrumentation enabled, you can start using Dynamic Instrumentation on the APM > Dynamic Instrumentation page.

Configuration

Configure Dynamic Instrumentation using the following environment variables:

Source map support

If the source code of your Node.js application is transpiled or bundled, you need to generate and publish the source maps along with the code, either inline or as separate files.

• TypeScript: Set either inlineSourceMap or sourceMap to true in the TypeScript config file.
• Babel: Configure the sourceMaps option in the Babel config file (see also the special --source-maps CLI option, used to generate separate source map files).
• Webpack: Configure the devtools option in the Webpack config file.
• CoffeeScript: Use either --inline-map or --map as arguments to the coffee CLI.

Note: For better runtime performance, it’s recommended not to include the original source code in the source maps.

What to do next

See Dynamic Instrumentation for information about adding instrumentations and browsing and indexing the data.

Limitations

The following limitations apply to the limited preview:

Supported features

• Dynamic Logs attached to a specific file/line
• Capturing of variables for Dynamic Logs
• PII redaction based on variable/property names
• Source code integration (including source map support)

Unsupported features

• Dynamic Metrics, Spans, and Span Tags
• Dynamic Logs attached to a function/method
• Custom template for Dynamic Logs
• Dynamic Log conditions
• PII redaction based on specific classes or types

Further reading

Additional helpful documentation, links, and articles:

Getting Started with Datadog AgentDOCUMENTATION