This documentation is for ddtrace gem v1.x. If you are using the datadog gem v2.0 or later, see the latest Tracing Ruby Applications documentation.

ddtrace is Datadog’s tracing client for Ruby. It is used to trace requests as they flow across web servers, databases and microservices so that developers have high visibility into bottlenecks and troublesome requests.

Getting started

If you’re upgrading from a 0.x version, check out our upgrade guide.

For the general APM documentation, see our setup documentation.

For more information about what APM looks like once your application is sending information to Datadog, take a look at Terms and Concepts.

For the library API documentation, see our YARD documentation.

To contribute, check out the contribution guidelines and development guide.

Compatibility requirements

For a full list of Datadog’s Ruby library support, see Compatibility Requirements.

Installation

Adding tracing to your Ruby application only takes a few quick steps:

  1. Setup the Datadog Agent for tracing
  2. Instrument your application
  3. Connect your application to the Datadog Agent

Setup the Datadog Agent for tracing

Before installing ddtrace, install the Datadog Agent, to which ddtrace will send trace data.

Then configure the Datadog Agent to accept traces. To do this, either:

  • Set DD_APM_ENABLED=true in the Agent’s environment

OR

Additionally, in containerized environments…

  • Set DD_APM_NON_LOCAL_TRAFFIC=true in the Agent’s environment

OR

See the specific setup instructions for Docker, Kubernetes, Amazon ECS or Fargate to ensure that the Agent is configured to receive traces in a containerized environment.

Configuring trace data ingestion

The Datadog Agent will listen for traces via HTTP on port 8126 by default.

You may change the protocol or port the Agent listens for trace data using the following:

For HTTP over TCP:

  • Set DD_APM_RECEIVER_PORT=<port> in the Agent’s environment

OR

For Unix Domain Socket (UDS):

  • Set DD_APM_RECEIVER_SOCKET=<path-to-socket-file>

OR

Instrument your application

Rails or Hanami applications

  1. Add the ddtrace gem to your Gemfile:

    source 'https://rubygems.org'
    gem 'ddtrace', require: 'ddtrace/auto_instrument'
    
  2. Install the gem with bundle install

  3. Create a config/initializers/datadog.rb file containing:

    Datadog.configure do |c|
      # Add additional configuration here.
      # Activate integrations, change tracer settings, etc...
    end
    

    Using this block you can:

Other Ruby applications

If your application does not use the supported gems (Rails or Hanami) above, you can set it up as follows:

  1. Add the ddtrace gem to your Gemfile:

    source 'https://rubygems.org'
    gem 'ddtrace'
    
  2. Install the gem with bundle install

  3. require any supported libraries or frameworks that should be instrumented.

  4. Add require 'ddtrace/auto_instrument' to your application. Note: This must be done after requiring any supported libraries or frameworks.

    # Example frameworks and libraries
    require 'sinatra'
    require 'faraday'
    require 'redis'
    
    require 'ddtrace/auto_instrument'
    
  5. Add a configuration block to your application:

    Datadog.configure do |c|
      # Add additional configuration here.
      # Activate integrations, change tracer settings, etc...
    end
    

    Using this block you can:

Configuring OpenTracing

  1. Add the ddtrace gem to your Gemfile:

    source 'https://rubygems.org'
    gem 'ddtrace'
    
  2. Install the gem with bundle install

  3. To your OpenTracing configuration file, add the following:

    require 'opentracing'
    require 'datadog/tracing'
    require 'datadog/opentracer'
    
    # Activate the Datadog tracer for OpenTracing
    OpenTracing.global_tracer = Datadog::OpenTracer::Tracer.new
    
  4. Add a configuration block to your application:

    Datadog.configure do |c|
      # Configure the Datadog tracer here.
      # Activate integrations, change tracer settings, etc...
      # By default without additional configuration,
      # no additional integrations will be traced, only
      # what you have instrumented with OpenTracing.
    end
    

    Using this block you can:

Configuring OpenTelemetry

You can send OpenTelemetry traces directly to the Datadog Agent (without ddtrace) by using OTLP. Check out our documentation on OTLP ingest in the Datadog Agent for details.

Connect your application to the Datadog Agent

By default, ddtrace will connect to the Agent using the first available settings in the listed priority:

  1. Via any explicitly provided configuration settings (hostname/port/transport)
  2. Via Unix Domain Socket (UDS) located at /var/run/datadog/apm.socket
  3. Via HTTP over TCP to 127.0.0.1:8126

If your Datadog Agent is listening at any of these locations, no further configuration should be required.

If your Agent runs on a different host or container than your application, or you would like to send traces via a different protocol, you will need to configure your application accordingly.

Final steps for installation

After setting up, your services will appear on the APM services page within a few minutes. Learn more about using the APM UI.

Manual Instrumentation

If you aren’t using a supported framework instrumentation, you may want to manually instrument your code.

To trace any Ruby code, you can use the Datadog::Tracing.trace method:

Datadog::Tracing.trace(name, **options) do |span, trace|
  # Wrap this block around the code you want to instrument
  # Additionally, you can modify the span here.
  # e.g. Change the resource name, set tags, etc...
end

Where name should be a String that describes the generic kind of operation being done (e.g. 'web.request', or 'request.parse')

And options are the following optional keyword arguments:

KeyTypeDescriptionDefault
autostartBoolWhether the time measurement should be started automatically. If false, user must call span.start.true
continue_fromDatadog::TraceDigestContinues a trace that originated from another execution context. TraceDigest describes the continuation point.nil
on_errorProcOverrides error handling behavior, when a span raises an error. Provided span and error as arguments. Sets error on the span by default.`proc {
resourceStringName of the resource or action being operated on. Traces with the same resource value will be grouped together for the purpose of metrics (but still independently viewable.) Usually domain specific, such as a URL, query, request, etc. (e.g. 'Article#submit', http://example.com/articles/list.)name of Span.
serviceStringThe service name which this span belongs (e.g. 'my-web-service')Tracer default-service, $PROGRAM_NAME or 'ruby'
start_timeTimeWhen the span actually starts. Useful when tracing events that have already happened.Time.now
tagsHashExtra tags which should be added to the span.{}
typeStringThe type of the span (such as 'http', 'db', etc.)nil

It’s highly recommended you set both service and resource at a minimum. Spans without a service or resource as nil will be discarded by the Datadog agent.

Example of manual instrumentation in action:

get '/posts' do
  Datadog::Tracing.trace('web.request', service: 'my-blog', resource: 'GET /posts') do |span|
    # Trace the activerecord call
    Datadog::Tracing.trace('posts.fetch') do
      @posts = Posts.order(created_at: :desc).limit(10)
    end

    # Add some APM tags
    span.set_tag('http.method', request.request_method)
    span.set_tag('posts.count', @posts.length)

    # Trace the template rendering
    Datadog::Tracing.trace('template.render') do
      erb :index
    end
  end
end

Asynchronous tracing

It might not always be possible to wrap Datadog::Tracing.trace around a block of code. Some event or notification based instrumentation might only notify you when an event begins or ends.

To trace these operations, you can trace code asynchronously by calling Datadog::Tracing.trace without a block:

# Some instrumentation framework calls this after an event finishes...
def db_query(start, finish, query)
  span = Datadog::Tracing.trace('database.query', start_time: start)
  span.resource = query
  span.finish(finish)
end

Calling Datadog::Tracing.trace without a block will cause the function to return a Datadog::Tracing::SpanOperation that is started, but not finished. You can then modify this span however you wish, then close it finish.

You must not leave any unfinished spans. If any spans are left open when the trace completes, the trace will be discarded. You can activate debug mode to check for warnings if you suspect this might be happening.

To avoid this scenario when handling start/finish events, you can use Datadog::Tracing.active_span to get the current active span.

# e.g. ActiveSupport::Notifications calls this when an event starts
def start(name, id, payload)
  # Start a span
  Datadog::Tracing.trace(name)
end

# e.g. ActiveSupport::Notifications calls this when an event finishes
def finish(name, id, payload)
  # Retrieve current active span (thread-safe)
  current_span = Datadog::Tracing.active_span
  unless current_span.nil?
    current_span.resource = payload[:query]
    current_span.finish
  end
end

Enriching traces from nested methods

You can tag additional information to the current active span from any method. Note however that if the method is called and there is no span currently active active_span will be nil.

# e.g. adding tag to active span

current_span = Datadog::Tracing.active_span
current_span.set_tag('my_tag', 'my_value') unless current_span.nil?

You can also get the current active trace using the active_trace method. This method will return nil if there is no active trace.

# e.g. accessing active trace

current_trace = Datadog::Tracing.active_trace

Integration instrumentation

Many popular libraries and frameworks are supported out-of-the-box, which can be auto-instrumented. Although they are not activated automatically, they can be easily activated and configured by using the Datadog.configure API:

Datadog.configure do |c|
  # Activates and configures an integration
  c.tracing.instrument :integration_name, **options
end

options are keyword arguments for integration-specific configuration.

For a list of available integrations and their supported versions, see Ruby Integration Compatibility.

For a list of configuration options for the available integrations, refer to the following:

CI Visibility

For Datadog CI Visibility, library instrumentation can be activated and configured by using the following Datadog.configure API:

Datadog.configure do |c|
  # Activates and configures an integration
  c.ci.instrument :integration_name, **options
end

options are keyword arguments for integration-specific configuration.

For a list of available integrations and their supported versions, see Ruby CI Integration Compatibility

Action Cable

The Action Cable integration traces broadcast messages and channel actions.

You can enable it through Datadog.configure:

require 'ddtrace'

Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.tracing.instrument :action_cable
end

Action Mailer

The Action Mailer integration provides tracing for Rails 5 ActionMailer actions.

You can enable it through Datadog.configure:

require 'ddtrace'
Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.tracing.instrument :action_mailer, **options
end

options are the following keyword arguments:

KeyDescriptionDefault
email_dataWhether or not to append additional email payload metadata to action_mailer.deliver spans. Fields include ['subject', 'to', 'from', 'bcc', 'cc', 'date', 'perform_deliveries'].false

Action Pack

Most of the time, Action Pack is set up as part of Rails, but it can be activated separately:

require 'actionpack'
require 'ddtrace'

Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.tracing.instrument :action_pack
end

Action View

Most of the time, Action View is set up as part of Rails, but it can be activated separately:

require 'actionview'
require 'ddtrace'

Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.tracing.instrument :action_view, **options
end

options are the following keyword arguments:

KeyDescriptionDefault
template_base_pathUsed when the template name is parsed. If you don’t store your templates in the views/ folder, you may need to change this value'views/'

Active Job

Most of the time, Active Job is set up as part of Rails, but it can be activated separately:

require 'active_job'
require 'ddtrace'

Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.tracing.instrument :active_job
end

ExampleJob.perform_later

Active Model Serializers

The Active Model Serializers integration traces the serialize event for version 0.9+ and the render event for version 0.10+.

require 'active_model_serializers'
require 'ddtrace'

Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.tracing.instrument :active_model_serializers
end

my_object = MyModel.new(name: 'my object')
ActiveModelSerializers::SerializableResource.new(test_obj).serializable_hash

Active Record

Most of the time, Active Record is set up as part of a web framework (Rails, Sinatra…) however, it can be set up alone:

require 'tmpdir'
require 'sqlite3'
require 'active_record'
require 'ddtrace'

Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.tracing.instrument :active_record, **options
end

Dir::Tmpname.create(['test', '.sqlite']) do |db|
  conn = ActiveRecord::Base.establish_connection(adapter: 'sqlite3',
                                                 database: db)
  conn.connection.execute('SELECT 42') # traced!
end

options are the following keyword arguments:

KeyDescriptionDefault
service_nameOverride the service name for the SQL query instrumentation. ActiveRecord instantiation instrumentation always uses the application’s configured service name.Name of database adapter (e.g. 'mysql2')

Configuring trace settings per database

You can configure trace settings per database connection by using the describes option:

# Provide a `:describes` option with a connection key.
# Any of the following keys are acceptable and equivalent to one another.
# If a block is provided, it yields a Settings object that
# accepts any of the configuration options listed above.

Datadog.configure do |c|
  # Symbol matching your database connection in config/database.yml
  # Only available if you are using Rails with ActiveRecord.
  c.tracing.instrument :active_record, describes: :secondary_database, service_name: 'secondary-db'

  # Block configuration pattern.
  c.tracing.instrument :active_record, describes: :secondary_database do |second_db|
    second_db.service_name = 'secondary-db'
  end

  # Connection string with the following connection settings:
  # adapter, username, host, port, database
  # Other fields are ignored.
  c.tracing.instrument :active_record, describes: 'mysql2://root@127.0.0.1:3306/mysql', service_name: 'secondary-db'

  # Hash with following connection settings:
  # adapter, username, host, port, database
  # Other fields are ignored.
  c.tracing.instrument :active_record, describes: {
      adapter:  'mysql2',
      host:     '127.0.0.1',
      port:     '3306',
      database: 'mysql',
      username: 'root'
    },
    service_name: 'secondary-db'

  # If using the `makara` gem, it's possible to match on connection `role`:
  c.tracing.instrument :active_record, describes: { makara_role: 'primary' }, service_name: 'primary-db'
  c.tracing.instrument :active_record, describes: { makara_role: 'replica' }, service_name: 'secondary-db'
end

You can also create configurations based on partial matching of database connection fields:

Datadog.configure do |c|
  # Matches any connection on host `127.0.0.1`.
  c.tracing.instrument :active_record, describes: { host:  '127.0.0.1' }, service_name: 'local-db'

  # Matches any `mysql2` connection.
  c.tracing.instrument :active_record, describes: { adapter: 'mysql2'}, service_name: 'mysql-db'

  # Matches any `mysql2` connection to the `reports` database.
  #
  # In case of multiple matching `describe` configurations, the latest one applies.
  # In this case a connection with both adapter `mysql` and database `reports`
  # will be configured `service_name: 'reports-db'`, not `service_name: 'mysql-db'`.
  c.tracing.instrument :active_record, describes: { adapter: 'mysql2', database:  'reports'}, service_name: 'reports-db'
end

When multiple describes configurations match a connection, the latest configured rule that matches will be applied.

If ActiveRecord traces an event that uses a connection that matches a key defined by describes, it will use the trace settings assigned to that connection. If the connection does not match any of the described connections, it will use default settings defined by c.tracing.instrument :active_record instead.

Active Support

Most of the time, Active Support is set up as part of Rails, but it can be activated separately:

require 'activesupport'
require 'ddtrace'

Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.tracing.instrument :active_support, **options
end

cache = ActiveSupport::Cache::MemoryStore.new
cache.read('city')

options are the following keyword arguments:

KeyDescriptionDefault
cache_serviceName of application running the active_support instrumentation. May be overridden by global_default_service_name. See Additional Configuration for more detailsactive_support-cache

AWS

The AWS integration will trace every interaction (e.g. API calls) with AWS services (S3, ElastiCache etc.).

require 'aws-sdk'
require 'ddtrace'

Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.tracing.instrument :aws, **options
end

# Perform traced call
Aws::S3::Client.new.list_buckets

options are the following keyword arguments:

KeyEnv VarDescriptionDefault
service_nameDD_TRACE_AWS_SERVICE_NAMEName of application running the aws instrumentation. May be overridden by global_default_service_name. See Additional Configuration for more detailsaws
peer_serviceDD_TRACE_AWS_PEER_SERVICEName of external service the application connects tonil

Concurrent Ruby

The Concurrent Ruby integration adds support for context propagation when using ::Concurrent::Future and Concurrent::Async, and ensures that code traced within the Future#execute and Concurrent::Async#async will have the correct parent set.

To activate your integration, use the Datadog.configure method:

# Inside Rails initializer or equivalent
Datadog.configure do |c|
  # Patches ::Concurrent::Future to use ExecutorService that propagates context
  c.tracing.instrument :concurrent_ruby
end

# Pass context into code executed within Concurrent::Future
Datadog::Tracing.trace('outer') do
  Concurrent::Future.execute { Datadog::Tracing.trace('inner') { } }.wait
end

# Pass context into code executed within Concurrent::Async
class MyClass
  include ConcurrentAsync

  def foo
    Datadog::Tracing.trace('inner') { }
  end
end

Datadog::Tracing.trace('outer') do
  MyClass.new.async.foo
end

Cucumber

Cucumber integration will trace all executions of scenarios and steps when using cucumber framework.

To activate your integration, use the Datadog.configure method:

require 'cucumber'
require 'ddtrace'

# Configure default Cucumber integration
Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.ci.instrument :cucumber, **options
end

# Example of how to attach tags from scenario to active span
Around do |scenario, block|
  active_span = Datadog.configuration[:cucumber][:tracer].active_span
  unless active_span.nil?
    scenario.tags.filter { |tag| tag.include? ':' }.each do |tag|
      active_span.set_tag(*tag.name.split(':', 2))
    end
  end
  block.call
end

options are the following keyword arguments:

KeyDescriptionDefault
enabledDefines whether Cucumber tests should be traced. Useful for temporarily disabling tracing. true or falsetrue
service_nameService name used for cucumber instrumentation.'cucumber'
operation_nameOperation name used for cucumber instrumentation. Useful if you want rename automatic trace metrics e.g. trace.#{operation_name}.errors.'cucumber.test'

Dalli

Dalli integration will trace all calls to your memcached server:

require 'dalli'
require 'ddtrace'

# Configure default Dalli tracing behavior
Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.tracing.instrument :dalli, **options
end

# Configure Dalli tracing behavior for single client
client = Dalli::Client.new('localhost:11211', **options)
client.set('abc', 123)

options are the following keyword arguments:

KeyEnv VarDescriptionDefault
command_enabledDD_TRACE_MEMCACHED_COMMAND_ENABLEDCollect commands as the memcached.command tag. Command keys can potentially contain sensitive information.false
service_nameDD_TRACE_DALLI_SERVICE_NAMEName of application running the dalli instrumentation. May be overridden by global_default_service_name. See Additional Configuration for more detailsmemcached
peer_serviceDD_TRACE_DALLI_PEER_SERVICEName of external service the application connects tonil

DelayedJob

The DelayedJob integration uses lifecycle hooks to trace the job executions and enqueues.

You can enable it through Datadog.configure:

require 'ddtrace'

Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.tracing.instrument :delayed_job, **options
end

options are the following keyword arguments:

KeyDescriptionDefault
error_handlerCustom error handler invoked when a job raises an error. Provided span and error as arguments. Sets error on the span by default. Useful for ignoring transient errors.proc { |span, error| span.set_error(error) unless span.nil? }

Elasticsearch

The Elasticsearch integration will trace any call to perform_request in the Client object:

require 'elasticsearch/transport'
require 'ddtrace'

Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.tracing.instrument :elasticsearch, **options
end

# Perform a query to Elasticsearch
client = Elasticsearch::Client.new url: 'http://127.0.0.1:9200'
response = client.perform_request 'GET', '_cluster/health'

# In case you want to override the global configuration for a certain client instance
Datadog.configure_onto(client.transport, **options)

options are the following keyword arguments:

KeyEnv VarDescriptionDefault
service_nameDD_TRACE_ELASTICSEARCH_SERVICE_NAMEName of application running the elasticsearch instrumentation. May be overridden by global_default_service_name. See Additional Configuration for more detailselasticsearch
peer_serviceDD_TRACE_ELASTICSEARCH_PEER_SERVICEName of external service the application connects tonil
quantizeHash containing options for quantization. May include :show with an Array of keys to not quantize (or :all to skip quantization), or :exclude with Array of keys to exclude entirely.{}

Ethon

The ethon integration will trace any HTTP request through Easy or Multi objects. Note that this integration also supports Typhoeus library which is based on Ethon.

require 'ddtrace'

Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.tracing.instrument :ethon, **options

  # optionally, specify a different service name for hostnames matching a regex
  c.tracing.instrument :ethon, describes: /user-[^.]+\.example\.com/ do |ethon|
    ethon.service_name = 'user.example.com'
    ethon.split_by_domain = false # Only necessary if split_by_domain is true by default
  end
end

options are the following keyword arguments:

KeyEnv VarDescriptionDefault
service_nameDD_TRACE_ETHON_SERVICE_NAMEName of application running the ethon instrumentation. May be overridden by global_default_service_name. See Additional Configuration for more detailsethon
peer_serviceDD_TRACE_ETHON_PEER_SERVICEName of external service the application connects tonil
distributed_tracingEnables distributed tracingtrue
split_by_domainUses the request domain as the service name when set to true.false

Excon

The excon integration is available through the ddtrace middleware:

require 'excon'
require 'ddtrace'

# Configure default Excon tracing behavior
Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.tracing.instrument :excon, **options

  # optionally, specify a different service name for hostnames matching a regex
  c.tracing.instrument :excon, describes: /user-[^.]+\.example\.com/ do |excon|
    excon.service_name = 'user.example.com'
    excon.split_by_domain = false # Only necessary if split_by_domain is true by default
  end
end

connection = Excon.new('https://example.com')
connection.get

options are the following keyword arguments:

KeyEnv VarDescriptionDefault
service_nameDD_TRACE_EXCON_SERVICE_NAMEName of application running the excon instrumentation. May be overridden by global_default_service_name. See Additional Configuration for more detailsexcon
peer_serviceDD_TRACE_EXCON_PEER_SERVICEName of external service the application connects tonil
distributed_tracingEnables distributed tracingtrue
split_by_domainUses the request domain as the service name when set to true.false
error_handlerA Proc that accepts a response parameter. If it evaluates to a truthy value, the trace span is marked as an error. By default only sets 5XX responses as errors.nil

Configuring connections to use different settings

If you use multiple connections with Excon, you can give each of them different settings by configuring their constructors with middleware:

# Wrap the Datadog tracing middleware around the default middleware stack
Excon.new(
  'http://example.com',
  middlewares: Datadog::Tracing::Contrib::Excon::Middleware.with(options).around_default_stack
)

# Insert the middleware into a custom middleware stack.
# NOTE: Trace middleware must be inserted after ResponseParser!
Excon.new(
  'http://example.com',
  middlewares: [
    Excon::Middleware::ResponseParser,
    Datadog::Tracing::Contrib::Excon::Middleware.with(options),
    Excon::Middleware::Idempotent
  ]
)

Where options is a Hash that contains any of the parameters listed in the table above.

Faraday

The faraday integration is available through the ddtrace middleware:

require 'faraday'
require 'ddtrace'

# Configure default Faraday tracing behavior
Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.tracing.instrument :faraday, **options

  # optionally, specify a different service name for hostnames matching a regex
  c.tracing.instrument :faraday, describes: /user-[^.]+\.example\.com/ do |faraday|
    faraday.service_name = 'user.example.com'
    faraday.split_by_domain = false # Only necessary if split_by_domain is true by default
  end
end

# In case you want to override the global configuration for a certain client instance
connection = Faraday.new('https://example.com') do |builder|
  builder.use(:ddtrace, **options)
  builder.adapter Faraday.default_adapter
end

connection.get('/foo')

options are the following keyword arguments:

KeyEnv VarDescriptionDefault
service_nameDD_TRACE_FARADAY_SERVICE_NAMEName of application running the faraday instrumentation. May be overridden by global_default_service_name. See Additional Configuration for more detailsfaraday
peer_serviceDD_TRACE_FARADAY_PEER_SERVICEName of external service the application connects tonil
distributed_tracingEnables distributed tracingtrue
split_by_domainUses the request domain as the service name when set to true.false
error_handlerA Proc that accepts a response parameter. If it evaluates to a truthy value, the trace span is marked as an error. By default only sets 5XX responses as errors.nil
on_errorCustom error handler invoked when a request raises an error. Provided span and error as arguments. Sets an error on the span by default.proc { |span, error| span.set_error(error) unless span.nil? }

Grape

The Grape integration adds the instrumentation to Grape endpoints and filters. This integration can work side by side with other integrations like Rack and Rails.

To activate your integration, use the Datadog.configure method before defining your Grape application:

# api.rb
require 'grape'
require 'ddtrace'

Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.tracing.instrument :grape, **options
end

# Then define your application
class RackTestingAPI < Grape::API
  desc 'main endpoint'
  get :success do
    'Hello world!'
  end
end

options are the following keyword arguments:

KeyEnv VarDescriptionDefault
enabledDD_TRACE_GRAPE_ENABLEDDefines whether Grape should be traced. Useful for temporarily disabling tracing. true or falsetrue
error_statusesDefines a status code or range of status codes which should be marked as errors. '404,405,500-599' or [404,405,'500-599']nil

GraphQL

The GraphQL integration activates instrumentation for GraphQL queries.

To activate your integration, use the Datadog.configure method:

# Inside Rails initializer or equivalent
Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.tracing.instrument :graphql, schemas: [YourSchema], **options
end

# Then run a GraphQL query
YourSchema.execute(query, variables: {}, context: {}, operation_name: nil)

The instrument :graphql method accepts the following parameters. Additional options can be substituted in for options:

KeyDescriptionDefault
schemasRequired. Array of GraphQL::Schema objects which to trace. Tracing will be added to all the schemas listed, using the options provided to this configuration. If you do not provide any, then tracing will not be activated.[]
service_nameService name used for graphql instrumentation'ruby-graphql'

Manually configuring GraphQL schemas

If you prefer to individually configure the tracer settings for a schema (e.g. you have multiple schemas with different service names), in the schema definition, you can add the following using the GraphQL API:

# Class-based schema
class YourSchema < GraphQL::Schema
  use(
    GraphQL::Tracing::DataDogTracing,
    service: 'graphql'
  )
end
# .define-style schema
YourSchema = GraphQL::Schema.define do
  use(
    GraphQL::Tracing::DataDogTracing,
    service: 'graphql'
  )
end

Or you can modify an already defined schema:

# Class-based schema
YourSchema.use(
    GraphQL::Tracing::DataDogTracing,
    service: 'graphql'
)
# .define-style schema
YourSchema.define do
  use(
    GraphQL::Tracing::DataDogTracing,
    service: 'graphql'
  )
end

Do NOT instrument :graphql in Datadog.configure if you choose to configure manually, as to avoid double tracing. These two means of configuring GraphQL tracing are considered mutually exclusive.

gRPC

The grpc integration adds both client and server interceptors, which run as middleware before executing the service’s remote procedure call. As gRPC applications are often distributed, the integration shares trace information between client and server.

To setup your integration, use the Datadog.configure method like so:

require 'grpc'
require 'ddtrace'

Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.tracing.instrument :grpc, **options
end

# Server side
server = GRPC::RpcServer.new
server.add_http2_port('localhost:50051', :this_port_is_insecure)
server.handle(Demo)
server.run_till_terminated

# Client side
client = Demo.rpc_stub_class.new('localhost:50051', :this_channel_is_insecure)
client.my_endpoint(DemoMessage.new(contents: 'hello!'))

options are the following keyword arguments:

KeyEnv VarDescriptionDefault
service_nameDD_TRACE_GRPC_SERVICE_NAMEName of application running the grpc instrumentation. May be overridden by global_default_service_name. See Additional Configuration for more detailsgrpc
peer_serviceDD_TRACE_GRPC_PEER_SERVICEName of external service the application connects tonil
distributed_tracingEnables distributed tracingtrue
server_error_handlerCustom error handler invoked when there is a server error. A Proc that accepts span and error parameters. Sets error on the span by default.proc { |span, error | span.set_error(error) unless span.nil? }
client_error_handlerCustom error handler invoked when there is a client error. A Proc that accepts span and error parameters. Sets error on the span by default.proc { |span, error | span.set_error(error) unless span.nil? }

Deprecation notice:

  • error_handler will be removed. Use server_error_handler instead.

Configuring clients to use different settings

In situations where you have multiple clients calling multiple distinct services, you may pass the Datadog interceptor directly, like so

configured_interceptor = Datadog::Tracing::Contrib::GRPC::DatadogInterceptor::Client.new do |c|
  c.service_name = "Alternate"
end

alternate_client = Demo::Echo::Service.rpc_stub_class.new(
  'localhost:50052',
  :this_channel_is_insecure,
  :interceptors => [configured_interceptor]
)

The integration will ensure that the configured_interceptor establishes a unique tracing setup for that client instance.

hanami

The hanami integration will instrument routing, action and render for your hanami application. To enable the hanami instrumentation, it is recommended to auto instrument with

gem 'ddtrace', require: 'ddtrace/auto_instrument'

and create an initializer file in your config/initializers folder:

# config/initializers/datadog.rb
Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.tracing.instrument :hanami, **options
end

options are the following keyword arguments:

KeyDescriptionDefault
service_nameService name for hanami instrumentation.nil

http.rb

The http.rb integration will trace any HTTP call using the Http.rb gem.

require 'http'
require 'ddtrace'
Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.tracing.instrument :httprb, **options
  # optionally, specify a different service name for hostnames matching a regex
  c.tracing.instrument :httprb, describes: /user-[^.]+\.example\.com/ do |httprb|
    httprb.service_name = 'user.example.com'
    httprb.split_by_domain = false # Only necessary if split_by_domain is true by default
  end
end

options are the following keyword arguments:

KeyEnv VarDescriptionDefault
service_nameDD_TRACE_HTTPRB_SERVICE_NAMEName of application running the httprb instrumentation. May be overridden by global_default_service_name. See Additional Configuration for more detailshttprb
peer_serviceDD_TRACE_HTTPRB_PEER_SERVICEName of external service the application connects tonil
distributed_tracingEnables distributed tracingtrue
split_by_domainUses the request domain as the service name when set to true.false
error_status_codesDD_TRACE_HTTPCLIENT_ERROR_STATUS_CODESRange or Array of HTTP status codes that should be traced as errors.400...600

httpclient

The httpclient integration will trace any HTTP call using the httpclient gem.

require 'httpclient'
require 'ddtrace'
Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.tracing.instrument :httpclient, **options
  # optionally, specify a different service name for hostnames matching a regex
  c.tracing.instrument :httpclient, describes: /user-[^.]+\.example\.com/ do |httpclient|
    httpclient.service_name = 'user.example.com'
    httpclient.split_by_domain = false # Only necessary if split_by_domain is true by default
  end
end

options are the following keyword arguments:

KeyEnv VarDescriptionDefault
service_nameDD_TRACE_HTTPCLIENT_SERVICE_NAMEName of application running the httpclient instrumentation. May be overridden by global_default_service_name. See Additional Configuration for more detailshttpclient
peer_serviceDD_TRACE_HTTPCLIENT_PEER_SERVICEName of external service the application connects tonil
distributed_tracingEnables distributed tracingtrue
split_by_domainUses the request domain as the service name when set to true.false
error_status_codesDD_TRACE_HTTPCLIENT_ERROR_STATUS_CODESRange or Array of HTTP status codes that should be traced as errors.400...600

httpx

httpx maintains its own integration with ddtrace:

require "ddtrace"
require "httpx/adapters/datadog"

Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.tracing.instrument :httpx

  # optionally, specify a different service name for hostnames matching a regex
  c.tracing.instrument :httpx, describes: /user-[^.]+\.example\.com/ do |http|
    http.service_name = 'user.example.com'
    http.split_by_domain = false # Only necessary if split_by_domain is true by default
  end
end

Kafka

The Kafka integration provides tracing of the ruby-kafka gem:

You can enable it through Datadog.configure:

require 'active_support/notifications' # required to enable 'ruby-kafka' instrumentation
require 'kafka'
require 'ddtrace'

Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.tracing.instrument :kafka
end

Minitest

The Minitest integration will trace all executions of tests when using minitest test framework.

To activate your integration, use the Datadog.configure method:

require 'minitest'
require 'ddtrace'

# Configure default Minitest integration
Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.ci.instrument :minitest, **options
end

options are the following keyword arguments:

KeyDescriptionDefault
enabledDefines whether Minitest tests should be traced. Useful for temporarily disabling tracing. true or falsetrue
service_nameService name used for minitest instrumentation.'minitest'
operation_nameOperation name used for minitest instrumentation. Useful if you want rename automatic trace metrics e.g. trace.#{operation_name}.errors.'minitest.test'

MongoDB

The integration traces any Command that is sent from the MongoDB Ruby Driver to a MongoDB cluster. By extension, Object Document Mappers (ODM) such as Mongoid are automatically instrumented if they use the official Ruby driver. To activate the integration, simply:

require 'mongo'
require 'ddtrace'

Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.tracing.instrument :mongo, **options
end

# Create a MongoDB client and use it as usual
client = Mongo::Client.new([ '127.0.0.1:27017' ], :database => 'artists')
collection = client[:people]
collection.insert_one({ name: 'Steve' })

# In case you want to override the global configuration for a certain client instance
Datadog.configure_onto(client, **options)

options are the following keyword arguments:

KeyEnv VarDescriptionDefault
service_nameDD_TRACE_MONGO_SERVICE_NAMEName of application running the mongo instrumentation. May be overridden by global_default_service_name. See Additional Configuration for more detailsmongodb
peer_serviceDD_TRACE_MONGO_PEER_SERVICEName of external service the application connects tonil
quantizeHash containing options for quantization. May include :show with an Array of keys to not quantize (or :all to skip quantization), or :exclude with Array of keys to exclude entirely.{ show: [:collection, :database, :operation] }

Configuring trace settings per connection

You can configure trace settings per connection by using the describes option:

# Provide a `:describes` option with a connection key.
# Any of the following keys are acceptable and equivalent to one another.
# If a block is provided, it yields a Settings object that
# accepts any of the configuration options listed above.

Datadog.configure do |c|
  # Network connection string
  c.tracing.instrument :mongo, describes: '127.0.0.1:27017', service_name: 'mongo-primary'

  # Network connection regular expression
  c.tracing.instrument :mongo, describes: /localhost.*/, service_name: 'mongo-secondary'
end

client = Mongo::Client.new([ '127.0.0.1:27017' ], :database => 'artists')
collection = client[:people]
collection.insert_one({ name: 'Steve' })
# Traced call will belong to `mongo-primary` service

client = Mongo::Client.new([ 'localhost:27017' ], :database => 'artists')
collection = client[:people]
collection.insert_one({ name: 'Steve' })
# Traced call will belong to `mongo-secondary` service

When multiple describes configurations match a connection, the latest configured rule that matches will be applied.

MySQL2

The MySQL2 integration traces any SQL command sent through mysql2 gem.

require 'mysql2'
require 'ddtrace'

Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.tracing.instrument :mysql2, **options
end

client = Mysql2::Client.new(:host => "localhost", :username => "root")
client.query("SELECT * FROM users WHERE group='x'")

options are the following keyword arguments:

KeyEnv VarDescriptionDefault
service_nameDD_TRACE_MYSQL2_SERVICE_NAMEName of application running the mysql2 instrumentation. May be overridden by global_default_service_name. See Additional Configuration for more detailsmysql2
peer_serviceDD_TRACE_MYSQL2_PEER_SERVICEName of external service the application connects tonil
comment_propagationDD_DBM_PROPAGATION_MODESQL comment propagation mode for database monitoring.
(example: disabled | service| full).

Important: Note that enabling SQL comment propagation results in potentially confidential data (service names) being stored in the databases which can then be accessed by other third parties that have been granted access to the database.
'disabled'
on_errorCustom error handler invoked when MySQL raises an error. Provided span and error as arguments. Sets error on the span by default. Useful for ignoring errors that are handled at the application level.proc { |span, error| span.set_error(error) unless span.nil? }

Net/HTTP

The Net/HTTP integration will trace any HTTP call using the standard lib Net::HTTP module.

require 'net/http'
require 'ddtrace'

Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.tracing.instrument :http, **options

  # optionally, specify a different service name for hostnames matching a regex
  c.tracing.instrument :http, describes: /user-[^.]+\.example\.com/ do |http|
    http.service_name = 'user.example.com'
    http.split_by_domain = false # Only necessary if split_by_domain is true by default
  end
end

Net::HTTP.start('127.0.0.1', 8080) do |http|
  request = Net::HTTP::Get.new '/index'
  response = http.request(request)
end

content = Net::HTTP.get(URI('http://127.0.0.1/index.html'))

options are the following keyword arguments:

KeyEnv VarDescriptionDefault
service_nameDD_TRACE_NET_HTTP_SERVICE_NAMEName of application running the net/http instrumentation. May be overridden by global_default_service_name. See Additional Configuration for more detailsnet/http
peer_serviceDD_TRACE_NET_HTTP_PEER_SERVICEName of external service the application connects tonil
distributed_tracingEnables distributed tracingtrue
split_by_domainUses the request domain as the service name when set to true.false
error_status_codesDD_TRACE_HTTP_ERROR_STATUS_CODESRange or Array of HTTP status codes that should be traced as errors.400...600

If you wish to configure each connection object individually, you may use the Datadog.configure_onto as it follows:

client = Net::HTTP.new(host, port)
Datadog.configure_onto(client, **options)

OpenSearch

The OpenSearch integration will trace any call to perform_request in the Client object:

require 'opensearch'
require 'ddtrace'

Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.tracing.instrument :opensearch, **options
end

# Perform a query to OpenSearch
client = OpenSearch::Client.new(
  host: 'https://localhost:9200',
  user: 'user',
  password: 'password',
)
client.cluster.health

options are the following keyword arguments:

KeyEnv VarDescriptionDefault
service_nameDD_TRACE_OPENSEARCH_SERVICE_NAMEName of application running the opensearch instrumentation. May be overridden by global_default_service_name. See Additional Configuration for more detailsopensearch
peer_serviceDD_TRACE_OPENSEARCH_PEER_SERVICEName of external service the application connects tonil
quantizeHash containing options for quantization. May include :show with an Array of keys to not quantize (or :all to skip quantization), or :exclude with Array of keys to exclude entirely.{}

Postgres

The PG integration traces SQL commands sent through the pg gem via:

  • exec, exec_params, exec_prepared;
  • async_exec, async_exec_params, async_exec_prepared; or,
  • sync_exec, sync_exec_params, sync_exec_prepared
require 'pg'
require 'ddtrace'

Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.tracing.instrument :pg, **options
end

options are the following keyword arguments:

KeyEnv VarDescriptionDefault
enabledDefines whether Postgres should be traced.true
service_nameDD_TRACE_PG_SERVICE_NAMEName of application running the pg instrumentation. May be overridden by global_default_service_name. See Additional Configuration for more detailspg
peer_serviceDD_TRACE_PG_PEER_SERVICEName of external service the application connects tonil
comment_propagationDD_DBM_PROPAGATION_MODESQL comment propagation mode for database monitoring.
(example: disabled | service| full).

Important: Note that enabling sql comment propagation results in potentially confidential data (service names) being stored in the databases which can then be accessed by other 3rd parties that have been granted access to the database.
'disabled'
error_handlerCustom error handler invoked when raises an error. Provided span and error as arguments. Sets error on the span by default. Useful for ignoring errors that are handled at application level.proc { |span, error| span.set_error(error) unless span.nil? }

Presto

The Presto integration traces any SQL command sent through presto-client gem.

require 'presto-client'
require 'ddtrace'

Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.tracing.instrument :presto, **options
end

client = Presto::Client.new(
  server: "localhost:8880",
  ssl: {verify: false},
  catalog: "native",
  schema: "default",
  time_zone: "US/Pacific",
  language: "English",
  http_debug: true,
)

client.run("select * from system.nodes")

options are the following keyword arguments:

KeyEnv VarDescriptionDefault
service_nameDD_TRACE_PRESTO_SERVICE_NAMEName of application running the presto instrumentation. May be overridden by global_default_service_name. See Additional Configuration for more detailspresto
peer_serviceDD_TRACE_PRESTO_PEER_SERVICEName of external service the application connects tonil

Qless

The Qless integration uses lifecycle hooks to trace job executions.

To add tracing to a Qless job:

require 'ddtrace'

Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.tracing.instrument :qless, **options
end

options are the following keyword arguments:

KeyEnv VarDescriptionDefault
tag_job_dataDD_QLESS_TAG_JOB_DATAEnable tagging with job arguments. true for on, false for off.false
tag_job_tagsDD_QLESS_TAG_JOB_TAGSEnable tagging with job tags. true for on, false for off.false

Que

The Que integration is a middleware which will trace job executions.

You can enable it through Datadog.configure:

require 'ddtrace'

Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.tracing.instrument :que, **options
end

options are the following keyword arguments:

KeyEnv VarDescriptionDefault
enabledDD_TRACE_QUE_ENABLEDDefines whether Que should be traced. Useful for temporarily disabling tracing. true or falsetrue
tag_argsDD_TRACE_QUE_TAG_ARGS_ENABLEDEnable tagging of a job’s args field. true for on, false for off.false
tag_dataDD_TRACE_QUE_TAG_DATA_ENABLEDEnable tagging of a job’s data field. true for on, false for off.false
error_handlerCustom error handler invoked when a job raises an error. Provided span and error as arguments. Sets error on the span by default. Useful for ignoring transient errors.proc { |span, error | span.set_error(error) unless span.nil? }

Racecar

The Racecar integration provides tracing for Racecar jobs.

You can enable it through Datadog.configure:

require 'ddtrace'

Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.tracing.instrument :racecar, **options
end

options are the following keyword arguments:

KeyEnv VarDescriptionDefault
service_nameDD_TRACE_RACECAR_SERVICE_NAMEName of application running the racecar instrumentation. May be overridden by global_default_service_name. See Additional Configuration for more detailsracecar

Rack

The Rack integration provides a middleware that traces all requests before they reach the underlying framework or application. It responds to the Rack minimal interface, providing reasonable values that can be retrieved at the Rack level.

This integration is automatically activated with web frameworks like Rails. If you’re using a plain Rack application, enable the integration it to your config.ru:

# config.ru example
require 'ddtrace'

Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.tracing.instrument :rack, **options
end

use Datadog::Tracing::Contrib::Rack::TraceMiddleware

app = proc do |env|
  [ 200, {'Content-Type' => 'text/plain'}, ['OK'] ]
end

run app

options are the following keyword arguments:

KeyDescriptionDefault
applicationYour Rack application. Required for middleware_names.nil
distributed_tracingEnables distributed tracing so that this service trace is connected with a trace of another service if tracing headers are receivedtrue
headersHash of HTTP request or response headers to add as tags to the rack.request. Accepts request and response keys with Array values e.g. ['Last-Modified']. Adds http.request.headers.* and http.response.headers.* tags respectively. This option overrides the global DD_TRACE_HEADER_TAGS, see Applying header tags to root spans for more information.{ response: ['Content-Type', 'X-Request-ID'] }
middleware_namesEnable this if you want to use the last executed middleware class as the resource name for the rack span. If enabled alongside the rails instrumention, rails takes precedence by setting the rack resource name to the active rails controller when applicable. Requires application option to use.false
quantizeHash containing options for quantization. May include :query or :fragment.{}
quantize.baseDefines behavior for URL base (scheme, host, port). May be :show to keep URL base in http.url tag and not set http.base_url tag, or nil to remove URL base from http.url tag by default, leaving a path and setting http.base_url. Option must be nested inside the quantize option.nil
quantize.queryHash containing options for query portion of URL quantization. May include :show or :exclude. See options below. Option must be nested inside the quantize option.{}
quantize.query.showDefines which values should always be shown. May be an Array of strings, :all to show all values, or nil to show no values. Option must be nested inside the query option.nil
quantize.query.excludeDefines which values should be removed entirely. May be an Array of strings, :all to remove the query string entirely, or nil to exclude nothing. Option must be nested inside the query option.nil
quantize.query.obfuscateDefines query string redaction behaviour. May be a hash of options, :internal to use the default internal obfuscation settings, or nil to disable obfuscation. Note that obfuscation is a string-wise operation, not a key-value operation. When enabled, query.show defaults to :all if otherwise unset. Option must be nested inside the query option.nil
quantize.query.obfuscate.withDefines the string to replace obfuscated matches with. May be a String. Option must be nested inside the query.obfuscate option.'<redacted>'
quantize.query.obfuscate.regexDefines the regex with which the query string will be redacted. May be a Regexp, or :internal to use the default internal Regexp, which redacts well-known sensitive data. Each match is redacted entirely by replacing it with query.obfuscate.with. Option must be nested inside the query.obfuscate option.:internal
quantize.fragmentDefines behavior for URL fragments. May be :show to show URL fragments, or nil to remove fragments. Option must be nested inside the quantize option.nil
request_queuingTrack HTTP request time spent in the queue of the frontend server. See HTTP request queuing for setup details.false
web_service_nameService name for frontend server request queuing spans. (e.g. 'nginx')'web-server'

Deprecation notice:

  • quantize.base will change its default from :exclude to :show in a future version. Voluntarily moving to :show is recommended.
  • quantize.query.show will change its default to :all in a future version, together with quantize.query.obfuscate changing to :internal. Voluntarily moving to these future values is recommended.

Configuring URL quantization behavior

Datadog.configure do |c|
  # Default behavior: all values are quantized, base is removed, fragment is removed.
  # http://example.com/path?category_id=1&sort_by=asc#featured --> /path?category_id&sort_by
  # http://example.com:8080/path?categories[]=1&categories[]=2 --> /path?categories[]

  # Remove URL base (scheme, host, port)
  # http://example.com/path?category_id=1&sort_by=asc#featured --> /path?category_id&sort_by#featured
  c.tracing.instrument :rack, quantize: { base: :exclude }

  # Show URL base
  # http://example.com/path?category_id=1&sort_by=asc#featured --> http://example.com/path?category_id&sort_by#featured
  c.tracing.instrument :rack, quantize: { base: :show }

  # Show values for any query string parameter matching 'category_id' exactly
  # http://example.com/path?category_id=1&sort_by=asc#featured --> /path?category_id=1&sort_by
  c.tracing.instrument :rack, quantize: { query: { show: ['category_id'] } }

  # Show all values for all query string parameters
  # http://example.com/path?category_id=1&sort_by=asc#featured --> /path?category_id=1&sort_by=asc
  c.tracing.instrument :rack, quantize: { query: { show: :all } }

  # Totally exclude any query string parameter matching 'sort_by' exactly
  # http://example.com/path?category_id=1&sort_by=asc#featured --> /path?category_id
  c.tracing.instrument :rack, quantize: { query: { exclude: ['sort_by'] } }

  # Remove the query string entirely
  # http://example.com/path?category_id=1&sort_by=asc#featured --> /path
  c.tracing.instrument :rack, quantize: { query: { exclude: :all } }

  # Show URL fragments
  # http://example.com/path?category_id=1&sort_by=asc#featured --> /path?category_id&sort_by#featured
  c.tracing.instrument :rack, quantize: { fragment: :show }

  # Obfuscate query string, defaulting to showing all values
  # http://example.com/path?password=qwerty&sort_by=asc#featured --> /path?<redacted>&sort_by=asc
  c.tracing.instrument :rack, quantize: { query: { obfuscate: {} } }

  # Obfuscate query string using the provided regex, defaulting to showing all values
  # http://example.com/path?category_id=1&sort_by=asc#featured --> /path?<redacted>&sort_by=asc
  c.tracing.instrument :rack, quantize: { query: { obfuscate: { regex: /category_id=\d+/ } } }

  # Obfuscate query string using a custom redaction string
  # http://example.com/path?password=qwerty&sort_by=asc#featured --> /path?REMOVED&sort_by=asc
  c.tracing.instrument :rack, quantize: { query: { obfuscate: { with: 'REMOVED' } } }
end

Rails

The Rails integration will trace requests, database calls, templates rendering, and cache read/write/delete operations. The integration makes use of the Active Support Instrumentation, listening to the Notification API so that any operation instrumented by the API is traced.

To enable the Rails instrumentation, create an initializer file in your config/initializers folder:

# config/initializers/datadog.rb
require 'ddtrace'

Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.tracing.instrument :rails, **options
end

options are the following keyword arguments:

KeyDescriptionDefault
distributed_tracingEnables distributed tracing so that this service trace is connected with a trace of another service if tracing headers are receivedtrue
request_queuingTrack HTTP request time spent in the queue of the frontend server. See HTTP request queuing for setup details.false
middlewareAdd the trace middleware to the Rails application. Set to false if you don’t want the middleware to load.true
middleware_namesEnables any short-circuited middleware requests to display the middleware name as a resource for the trace.false
service_nameService name used when tracing application requests (on the rack level)'<app_name>' (inferred from your Rails application namespace)
template_base_pathUsed when the template name is parsed. If you don’t store your templates in the views/ folder, you may need to change this value'views/'

Supported versions

MRI VersionsJRuby VersionsRails Versions
2.13.2 - 4.2
2.2 - 2.33.2 - 5.2
2.44.2.8 - 5.2
2.54.2.8 - 6.1
2.6 - 2.79.25.0 - 6.1
3.0 - 3.26.1

Rake

You can add instrumentation around your Rake tasks by activating the rake integration and providing a list of what Rake tasks need to be instrumented.

Avoid instrumenting long-running Rake tasks, as such tasks can aggregate large traces in memory that are never flushed until the task finishes.

For long-running tasks, use Manual instrumentation around recurring code paths.

To activate Rake task tracing, add the following to your Rakefile:

# At the top of your Rakefile:
require 'rake'
require 'ddtrace'

Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.tracing.instrument :rake, tasks: ['my_task'], **options
end

task :my_task do
  # Do something task work here...
end

Rake::Task['my_task'].invoke

options are the following keyword arguments:

KeyDescriptionDefault
enabledDefines whether Rake tasks should be traced. Useful for temporarily disabling tracing. true or falsetrue
quantizeHash containing options for quantization of task arguments. See below for more details and examples.{}
service_nameService name used for rake instrumentation'rake'
tasksNames of the Rake tasks to instrument[]

Configuring task quantization behavior

Datadog.configure do |c|
  # Given a task that accepts :one, :two, :three...
  # Invoked with 'foo', 'bar', 'baz'.

  # Default behavior: all arguments are quantized.
  # `rake.invoke.args` tag  --> ['?']
  # `rake.execute.args` tag --> { one: '?', two: '?', three: '?' }
  c.tracing.instrument :rake

  # Show values for any argument matching :two exactly
  # `rake.invoke.args` tag  --> ['?']
  # `rake.execute.args` tag --> { one: '?', two: 'bar', three: '?' }
  c.tracing.instrument :rake, quantize: { args: { show: [:two] } }

  # Show all values for all arguments.
  # `rake.invoke.args` tag  --> ['foo', 'bar', 'baz']
  # `rake.execute.args` tag --> { one: 'foo', two: 'bar', three: 'baz' }
  c.tracing.instrument :rake, quantize: { args: { show: :all } }

  # Totally exclude any argument matching :three exactly
  # `rake.invoke.args` tag  --> ['?']
  # `rake.execute.args` tag --> { one: '?', two: '?' }
  c.tracing.instrument :rake, quantize: { args: { exclude: [:three] } }

  # Remove the arguments entirely
  # `rake.invoke.args` tag  --> ['?']
  # `rake.execute.args` tag --> {}
  c.tracing.instrument :rake, quantize: { args: { exclude: :all } }
end

Redis

The Redis integration will trace simple calls as well as pipelines.

require 'redis'
require 'ddtrace'

Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.tracing.instrument :redis, **options
end

# Perform Redis commands
redis = Redis.new
redis.set 'foo', 'bar'

options are the following keyword arguments:

KeyEnv VarDescriptionDefault
service_nameDD_TRACE_REDIS_SERVICE_NAMEName of application running the redis instrumentation. May be overridden by global_default_service_name. See Additional Configuration for more detailsredis
peer_serviceDD_TRACE_REDIS_PEER_SERVICEName of external service the application connects tonil
command_argsDD_REDIS_COMMAND_ARGSShow the command arguments (for example, key in GET key) as resource name and tag. If false, only the command name is shown (for example, GET).false

Configuring trace settings per instance

With Redis version >= 5:

require 'redis'
require 'ddtrace'

Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.tracing.instrument :redis # Enabling integration instrumentation is still required
end

customer_cache = Redis.new(custom: { datadog: { service_name: 'custom-cache' } })
invoice_cache = Redis.new(custom: { datadog: { service_name: 'invoice-cache' } })

# Traced call will belong to `customer-cache` service
customer_cache.get(...)
# Traced call will belong to `invoice-cache` service
invoice_cache.get(...)

With a standalone RedisClient:

require "redis-client"
require "ddtrace"

redis = RedisClient.config(custom: { datadog: { service_name: "my-custom-redis" } }).new_client

Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.tracing.instrument :redis # Enabling integration instrumentation is still required
end

redis.call('PING')

With Redis version < 5:

require 'redis'
require 'ddtrace'

Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.tracing.instrument :redis # Enabling integration instrumentation is still required
end

customer_cache = Redis.new
invoice_cache = Redis.new

Datadog.configure_onto(customer_cache, service_name: 'customer-cache')
Datadog.configure_onto(invoice_cache, service_name: 'invoice-cache')

# Traced call will belong to `customer-cache` service
customer_cache.get(...)
# Traced call will belong to `invoice-cache` service
invoice_cache.get(...)

Configuring trace settings per connection

You can configure trace settings per connection by using the describes option:

# Provide a `:describes` option with a connection key.
# Any of the following keys are acceptable and equivalent to one another.
# If a block is provided, it yields a Settings object that
# accepts any of the configuration options listed above.

Datadog.configure do |c|
  # The default configuration for any redis client
  c.tracing.instrument :redis, service_name: 'redis-default'

  # The configuration matching a given unix socket.
  c.tracing.instrument :redis, describes: { url: 'unix://path/to/file' }, service_name: 'redis-unix'

  # For network connections, only these fields are considered during matching:
  # scheme, host, port, db
  # Other fields are ignored.

  # Network connection string
  c.tracing.instrument :redis, describes: 'redis://127.0.0.1:6379/0', service_name: 'redis-connection-string'
  c.tracing.instrument :redis, describes: { url: 'redis://127.0.0.1:6379/1' }, service_name: 'redis-connection-url'
  # Network client hash
  c.tracing.instrument :redis, describes: { host: 'my-host.com', port: 6379, db: 1, scheme: 'redis' }, service_name: 'redis-connection-hash'
  # Only a subset of the connection hash
  c.tracing.instrument :redis, describes: { host: ENV['APP_CACHE_HOST'], port: ENV['APP_CACHE_PORT'] }, service_name: 'redis-cache'
  c.tracing.instrument :redis, describes: { host: ENV['SIDEKIQ_CACHE_HOST'] }, service_name: 'redis-sidekiq'
end

When multiple describes configurations match a connection, the latest configured rule that matches will be applied.

Resque

The Resque integration uses Resque hooks that wraps the perform method.

To add tracing to a Resque job:

require 'resque'
require 'ddtrace'

Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.tracing.instrument :resque, **options
end

options are the following keyword arguments:

KeyDescriptionDefault
error_handlerCustom error handler invoked when a job raises an error. Provided span and error as arguments. Sets error on the span by default. Useful for ignoring transient errors.proc { |span, error| span.set_error(error) unless span.nil? }

Rest Client

The rest-client integration is available through the ddtrace middleware:

require 'rest_client'
require 'ddtrace'

Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.tracing.instrument :rest_client, **options
end

options are the following keyword arguments:

KeyEnv VarDescriptionDefault
service_nameDD_TRACE_REST_CLIENT_SERVICE_NAMEName of application running the rest_client instrumentation. May be overridden by global_default_service_name. See Additional Configuration for more detailsrest_client
peer_serviceDD_TRACE_REST_CLIENT_PEER_SERVICEName of external service the application connects tonil
distributed_tracingEnables distributed tracingtrue
split_by_domainUses the request domain as the service name when set to true.false

Roda

The Roda integration traces requests.

The Roda integration can be enabled through Datadog.configure. It is recommended to use this integration with Rack through use Datadog::Tracing::Contrib::Rack::TraceMiddleware for distributed tracing.

require "roda"
require "ddtrace"

class SampleApp < Roda
  use Datadog::Tracing::Contrib::Rack::TraceMiddleware

  Datadog.configure do |c|
    c.tracing.instrument :roda, **options
  end

  route do |r|
    r.root do
      r.get do
        'Hello World!'
      end
    end
  end
end

options are the following keyword arguments:

KeyDescriptionDefault
service_nameService name for roda instrumentation.'nil'

RSpec

RSpec integration will trace all executions of example groups and examples when using rspec test framework.

To activate your integration, use the Datadog.configure method:

require 'rspec'
require 'ddtrace'

# Configure default RSpec integration
Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.ci.instrument :rspec, **options
end

options are the following keyword arguments:

KeyDescriptionDefault
enabledDefines whether RSpec tests should be traced. Useful for temporarily disabling tracing. true or falsetrue
service_nameService name used for rspec instrumentation.'rspec'
operation_nameOperation name used for rspec instrumentation. Useful if you want rename automatic trace metrics e.g. trace.#{operation_name}.errors.'rspec.example'

Sequel

The Sequel integration traces queries made to your database.

require 'sequel'
require 'ddtrace'

# Connect to database
database = Sequel.sqlite

# Create a table
database.create_table :articles do
  primary_key :id
  String :name
end

Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.tracing.instrument :sequel, **options
end

# Perform a query
articles = database[:articles]
articles.all

options are the following keyword arguments:

KeyDescriptionDefault
service_nameService name for sequel instrumentationName of database adapter (e.g. 'mysql2')

Configuring databases to use different settings

If you use multiple databases with Sequel, you can give each of them different settings by configuring their respective Sequel::Database objects:

sqlite_database = Sequel.sqlite
postgres_database = Sequel.connect('postgres://user:password@host:port/database_name')

# Configure each database with different service names
Datadog.configure_onto(sqlite_database, service_name: 'my-sqlite-db')
Datadog.configure_onto(postgres_database, service_name: 'my-postgres-db')

Shoryuken

The Shoryuken integration is a server-side middleware which will trace job executions.

You can enable it through Datadog.configure:

require 'ddtrace'

Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.tracing.instrument :shoryuken, **options
end

options are the following keyword arguments:

KeyDescriptionDefault
tag_bodyTag spans with the SQS message body true or falsefalse
error_handlerCustom error handler invoked when a job raises an error. Provided span and error as arguments. Sets error on the span by default. Useful for ignoring transient errors.proc { |span, error| span.set_error(error) unless span.nil? }

Sidekiq

The Sidekiq integration is a client-side & server-side middleware which will trace job queuing and executions respectively.

You can enable it through Datadog.configure:

require 'ddtrace'

Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.tracing.instrument :sidekiq, **options
end

options are the following keyword arguments:

KeyDescriptionDefault
distributed_tracingEnabling distributed tracing creates a parent-child relationship between the sidekiq.push span and the sidekiq.job span.

Important: Enabling distributed_tracing for asynchronous processing can result in drastic changes in your trace graph. Such cases include long running jobs, retried jobs, and jobs scheduled in the far future. Make sure to inspect your traces after enabling this feature.
false
tag_argsEnable tagging of job arguments. true for on, false for off.false
error_handlerCustom error handler invoked when a job raises an error. Provided span and error as arguments. Sets error on the span by default. Useful for ignoring transient errors.proc { |span, error| span.set_error(error) unless span.nil? }
quantizeHash containing options for quantization of job arguments.{}

Sinatra

The Sinatra integration traces requests and template rendering.

To start using the tracing client, make sure you import ddtrace and instrument :sinatra after either sinatra or sinatra/base, and before you define your application/routes:

Classic application

require 'sinatra'
require 'ddtrace'

Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.tracing.instrument :sinatra, **options
end

get '/' do
  'Hello world!'
end

Modular application

require 'sinatra/base'
require 'ddtrace'

Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.tracing.instrument :sinatra, **options
end

class NestedApp < Sinatra::Base
  get '/nested' do
    'Hello from nested app!'
  end
end

class App < Sinatra::Base
  use NestedApp

  get '/' do
    'Hello world!'
  end
end

Instrumentation options

options are the following keyword arguments:

KeyDescriptionDefault
distributed_tracingEnables distributed tracing so that this service trace is connected with a trace of another service if tracing headers are receivedtrue
headersHash of HTTP request or response headers to add as tags to the sinatra.request. Accepts request and response keys with Array values e.g. ['Last-Modified']. Adds http.request.headers.* and http.response.headers.* tags respectively. This option overrides the global DD_TRACE_HEADER_TAGS, see Applying header tags to root spans for more information.{ response: ['Content-Type', 'X-Request-ID'] }
resource_script_namesPrepend resource names with script namefalse

Sneakers

The Sneakers integration is a server-side middleware which will trace job executions.

You can enable it through Datadog.configure:

require 'ddtrace'

Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.tracing.instrument :sneakers, **options
end

options are the following keyword arguments:

KeyDescriptionDefault
enabledDefines whether Sneakers should be traced. Useful for temporarily disabling tracing. true or falsetrue
tag_bodyEnable tagging of job message. true for on, false for off.false
error_handlerCustom error handler invoked when a job raises an error. Provided span and error as arguments. Sets error on the span by default. Useful for ignoring transient errors.proc { |span, error| span.set_error(error) unless span.nil? }

Stripe

The Stripe integration traces Stripe API requests.

You can enable it through Datadog.configure:

require 'ddtrace'

Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.tracing.instrument :stripe, **options
end

options are the following keyword arguments:

KeyDescriptionDefault
enabledDefines whether Stripe should be traced. Useful for temporarily disabling tracing. true or falsetrue

Sucker Punch

The sucker_punch integration traces all scheduled jobs:

require 'ddtrace'

Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.tracing.instrument :sucker_punch
end

# Execution of this job is traced
LogJob.perform_async('login')

Trilogy

The trilogy integration traces any SQL command sent through the trilogy gem.

require 'trilogy'
require 'ddtrace'

Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.tracing.instrument :trilogy, **options
end

client = Trilogy.new(host: "localhost", username: "root")
client.query("SELECT * FROM users WHERE group='x'")

options are the following keyword arguments:

KeyEnv VarDescriptionDefault
service_nameDD_TRACE_TRILOGY_SERVICE_NAMEName of application running the trilogy instrumentation. May be overridden by global_default_service_name. See Additional Configuration for more detailstrilogy
peer_serviceDD_TRACE_TRILOGY_PEER_SERVICEName of external service the application connects tonil

Additional configuration

To change the default behavior of ddtrace, you can use, in order of priority, with 1 being the highest:

  1. Remote Configuration.
  2. Options set inside a Datadog.configure block, e.g.:
    Datadog.configure do |c|
      c.service = 'billing-api'
      c.env = ENV['RACK_ENV']
    
      c.tracing.report_hostname = true
      c.tracing.test_mode.enabled = (ENV['RACK_ENV'] == 'test')
    end
    
  3. Environment variables.

If a higher priority value is set for an option, setting that option with a lower priority value will not change its effective value.

For example, if tracing.sampling.default_rate is configured by Remote Configuration, changing its value through the Datadog.configure block will have no effect.

Available configuration options:

SettingEnv VarDefaultDescription
Global
agent.hostDD_AGENT_HOST127.0.0.1Hostname of Agent to where trace data will be sent.
agent.portDD_TRACE_AGENT_PORT8126Port of Agent host to where trace data will be sent. If the Agent configuration sets receiver_port or DD_APM_RECEIVER_PORT to something other than the default 8126, then DD_TRACE_AGENT_PORT or DD_TRACE_AGENT_URL must match it.
DD_TRACE_AGENT_URLnilSets the URL endpoint where traces are sent. Has priority over agent.host and agent.port. If the Agent configuration sets receiver_port or DD_APM_RECEIVER_PORT to something other than the default 8126, then DD_TRACE_AGENT_PORT or DD_TRACE_AGENT_URL must match it.
diagnostics.debugDD_TRACE_DEBUGfalseEnables or disables debug mode. Prints verbose logs. NOT recommended for production or other sensitive environments. See Debugging and diagnostics for more details.
diagnostics.startup_logs.enabledDD_TRACE_STARTUP_LOGSnilPrints startup configuration and diagnostics to log. For assessing state of tracing at application startup. See Debugging and diagnostics for more details.
envDD_ENVnilYour application environment. (e.g. production, staging, etc.) This value is set as a tag on all traces.
serviceDD_SERVICERuby filenameYour application’s default service name. (e.g. billing-api) This value is set as a tag on all traces.
tagsDD_TAGSnilCustom tags in value pairs separated by , (e.g. layer:api,team:intake) These tags are set on all traces. See Environment and tags for more details.
time_now_provider->{ Time.now }Changes how time is retrieved. See Setting the time provider for more details.
versionDD_VERSIONnilYour application version (e.g. 2.5, 202003181415, 1.3-alpha, etc.) This value is set as a tag on all traces.
telemetry.enabledDD_INSTRUMENTATION_TELEMETRY_ENABLEDtrueAllows you to enable sending telemetry data to Datadog. Can be disabled, as documented here.
Tracing
tracing.contrib.peer_service_mappingDD_TRACE_PEER_SERVICE_MAPPINGnilDefines remapping of peer.service tag across all instrumentation. Provide a list of old_value1:new_value1, old_value2:new_value2, ...
tracing.contrib.global_default_service_name.enabledDD_TRACE_REMOVE_INTEGRATION_SERVICE_NAMES_ENABLEDfalseChanges the default value for service_name to the application service name across all instrumentation. Used with Inferred Services Beta
tracing.distributed_tracing.propagation_extract_firstDD_TRACE_PROPAGATION_EXTRACT_FIRSTfalseStop searching after detecting the first valid propagation format. See Distributed Tracing for more details.
tracing.distributed_tracing.propagation_extract_styleDD_TRACE_PROPAGATION_STYLE_EXTRACT['Datadog','tracecontext']Distributed tracing propagation formats to extract. Overrides DD_TRACE_PROPAGATION_STYLE. See Distributed Tracing for more details.
tracing.distributed_tracing.propagation_inject_styleDD_TRACE_PROPAGATION_STYLE_INJECT['Datadog','tracecontext']Distributed tracing propagation formats to inject. Overrides DD_TRACE_PROPAGATION_STYLE. See Distributed Tracing for more details.
tracing.distributed_tracing.propagation_styleDD_TRACE_PROPAGATION_STYLEnilDistributed tracing propagation formats to extract and inject. See Distributed Tracing for more details.
tracing.enabledDD_TRACE_ENABLEDtrueEnables or disables tracing. If set to false instrumentation will still run, but no traces are sent to the trace agent.
tracing.header_tagsDD_TRACE_HEADER_TAGSnilRecord HTTP headers as span tags. See Applying header tags to root spans for more information.
tracing.instrument(<integration-name>, <options...>)Activates instrumentation for a specific library. See Integration instrumentation for more details.
tracing.log_injectionDD_LOGS_INJECTIONtrueInjects Trace Correlation information into Rails logs if present. Supports the default logger (ActiveSupport::TaggedLogging), lograge, and semantic_logger.
tracing.partial_flush.enabledfalseEnables or disables partial flushing. Partial flushing submits completed portions of a trace to the agent. Used when tracing instruments long running tasks (e.g. jobs) with many spans.
tracing.partial_flush.min_spans_threshold500The number of spans that must be completed in a trace before partial flushing submits those completed spans.
tracing.samplernilAdvanced usage only. Sets a custom Datadog::Tracing::Sampling::Sampler instance. If provided, the tracer will use this sampler to determine sampling behavior. See Application-side sampling for details.
tracing.sampling.default_rateDD_TRACE_SAMPLE_RATEnilSets the trace sampling rate between 0.0 (0%) and 1.0 (100%). See Application-side sampling for details.
tracing.sampling.rate_limitDD_TRACE_RATE_LIMIT100 (per second)Sets a maximum number of traces per second to sample. Set a rate limit to avoid the ingestion volume overages in the case of traffic spikes.
tracing.sampling.rulesDD_TRACE_SAMPLING_RULESnilSets trace-level sampling rules, matching against the local root span. The format is a String with JSON, containing an Array of Objects. Each Object must have a float attribute sample_rate (between 0.0 and 1.0, inclusive), and optionally name, service, resource, and tags string attributes. name, service, resource, and tags control to which traces this sampling rule applies; if they are all absent, then this rule applies to all traces. Rules are evaluted in order of declartion in the array; only the first to match is applied. If none apply, then tracing.sampling.default_rate is applied.
tracing.sampling.span_rulesDD_SPAN_SAMPLING_RULES,ENV_SPAN_SAMPLING_RULES_FILEnilSets Single Span Sampling rules. These rules allow you to keep spans even when their respective traces are dropped.
tracing.trace_id_128_bit_generation_enabledDD_TRACE_128_BIT_TRACEID_GENERATION_ENABLEDtruetrue to generate 128 bits trace ID and false to generate 64 bits trace ID
tracing.report_hostnameDD_TRACE_REPORT_HOSTNAMEfalseAdds hostname tag to traces.
tracing.test_mode.enabledDD_TRACE_TEST_MODE_ENABLEDfalseEnables or disables test mode, for use of tracing in test suites.
tracing.test_mode.trace_flushnilObject that determines trace flushing behavior.

Custom logging

By default, all logs are processed by the default Ruby logger. When using Rails, you should see the messages in your application log file.

Datadog client log messages are marked with [ddtrace] so you should be able to isolate them from other messages.

Additionally, it is possible to override the default logger and replace it by a custom one. This is done using the log setting.

f = File.new("my-custom.log", "w+") # Log messages should go there
Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.logger.instance = Logger.new(f) # Overriding the default logger
  c.logger.level = ::Logger::INFO
end

Datadog.logger.info { "this is typically called by tracing code" }

Environment and tags

By default, the trace Agent (not this library, but the program running in the background collecting data from various clients) uses the tags set in the Agent config file. You can configure the application to automatically tag your traces and metrics, using the following environment variables:

  • DD_ENV: Your application environment (e.g. production, staging, etc.)
  • DD_SERVICE: Your application’s default service name (e.g. billing-api)
  • DD_VERSION: Your application version (e.g. 2.5, 202003181415, 1.3-alpha, etc.)
  • DD_TAGS: Custom tags in value pairs separated by , (e.g. layer:api,team:intake)
    • If DD_ENV, DD_SERVICE or DD_VERSION are set, it will override any respective env/service/version tag defined in DD_TAGS.
    • If DD_ENV, DD_SERVICE or DD_VERSION are NOT set, tags defined in DD_TAGS will be used to populate env/service/version respectively.

These values can also be overridden at the tracer level:

Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.service = 'billing-api'
  c.env = 'test'
  c.tags = { 'team' => 'qa' }
  c.version = '1.3-alpha'
end

This enables you to set this value on a per application basis, so you can have for example several applications reporting for different environments on the same host.

Tags can also be set directly on individual spans, which will supersede any conflicting tags defined at the application level.

Debugging and diagnostics

There are two different suggested means of producing diagnostics for tracing:

Enabling debug mode

Switching the library into debug mode will produce verbose, detailed logs about tracing activity, including any suppressed errors. This output can be helpful in identifying errors, or confirming trace output to the Agent.

You can enable this via diagnostics.debug = true or DD_TRACE_DEBUG.

Datadog.configure { |c| c.diagnostics.debug = true }

We do NOT recommend use of this feature in production or other sensitive environments, as it can be very verbose under load. It’s best to use this in a controlled environment where you can control application load.

Enabling startup logs

Startup logs produce a report of tracing state when the application is initially configured. This can be helpful for confirming that configuration and instrumentation is activated correctly.

You can enable this via diagnostics.startup_logs.enabled = true or DD_TRACE_STARTUP_LOGS.

Datadog.configure { |c| c.diagnostics.startup_logs.enabled = true }

By default, this will be activated whenever ddtrace detects the application is running in a non-development environment.

Sampling

See Ingestion Mechanisms for a list of all the sampling options available.

Priority sampling

Priority sampling decides whether to keep a trace by using a priority attribute propagated for distributed traces. Its value indicates to the Agent and the backend about how important the trace is.

The sampler can set the priority to the following values:

  • Datadog::Tracing::Sampling::Ext::Priority::AUTO_REJECT: the sampler automatically decided to reject the trace.
  • Datadog::Tracing::Sampling::Ext::Priority::AUTO_KEEP: the sampler automatically decided to keep the trace.

Priority sampling is enabled by default. Enabling it ensures that your sampled distributed traces will be complete. Once enabled, the sampler will automatically assign a priority of 0 or 1 to traces, depending on their service and volume.

You can also set this priority manually to either drop a non-interesting trace or to keep an important one. For that, set the TraceOperation#sampling_priority to:

  • Datadog::Tracing::Sampling::Ext::Priority::USER_REJECT: the user asked to reject the trace.
  • Datadog::Tracing::Sampling::Ext::Priority::USER_KEEP: the user asked to keep the trace.

When not using distributed tracing, you may change the priority at any time, as long as the trace incomplete. But it has to be done before any context propagation (fork, RPC calls) to be useful in a distributed context. Changing the priority after the context has been propagated causes different parts of a distributed trace to use different priorities. Some parts might be kept, some parts might be rejected, and this can cause the trace to be partially stored and remain incomplete.

For this reason, if you change the priority, we recommend you do it as early as possible.

To change the sampling priority, you can use the following methods:

# Rejects the active trace
Datadog::Tracing.reject!

# Keeps the active trace
Datadog::Tracing.keep!

It’s safe to use Datadog::Tracing.reject! and Datadog::Tracing.keep! when no trace is active.

You can also reject a specific trace instance:

# First, grab the active trace
trace = Datadog::Tracing.active_trace

# Rejects the trace
trace.reject!

# Keeps the trace
trace.keep!

Single Span Sampling

You can configure sampling rule that allow you keep spans despite their respective traces being dropped by a trace-level sampling rule.

This allows you to keep important spans when trace-level sampling is applied. Is is not possible to drop spans using Single Span Sampling.

To configure it, see the Ingestion Mechanisms documentation.

Application-side sampling

While the Datadog Agent can sample traces to reduce bandwidth usage, application-side sampling reduces the performance overhead in the host application.

Application-side sampling drops traces as early as possible. This causes the Ingestion Controls page to not receive enough information to report accurate sampling rates. Use only when reducing the tracing overhead is paramount.

If you are use this feature, please let us know by opening an issue on GitHub, so we can better understand and support your use case.

You can configure Application-side sampling with the following settings:

# Application-side sampling enabled: Ingestion Controls page will be inaccurate.
sampler = Datadog::Tracing::Sampling::RateSampler.new(0.5) # sample 50% of the traces

Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.tracing.sampler = sampler
end

See Additional Configuration for more details about these settings.

Distributed Tracing

Distributed tracing allows traces to be propagated across multiple instrumented applications so that a request can be presented as a single trace, rather than a separate trace per service.

To trace requests across application boundaries, the following must be propagated between each application:

PropertyTypeDescription
Trace IDIntegerID of the trace. This value should be the same across all requests that belong to the same trace.
Parent Span IDIntegerID of the span in the service originating the request. This value will always be different for each request within a trace.
Sampling PriorityIntegerSampling priority level for the trace. This value should be the same across all requests that belong to the same trace.

Such propagation can be visualized as:

Service A:
  Trace ID:  100000000000000001
  Parent ID: 0
  Span ID:   100000000000000123
  Priority:  1

  |
  | Service B Request:
  |   Metadata:
  |     Trace ID:  100000000000000001
  |     Parent ID: 100000000000000123
  |     Priority:  1
  |
  V

Service B:
  Trace ID:  100000000000000001
  Parent ID: 100000000000000123
  Span ID:   100000000000000456
  Priority:  1

  |
  | Service C Request:
  |   Metadata:
  |     Trace ID:  100000000000000001
  |     Parent ID: 100000000000000456
  |     Priority:  1
  |
  V

Service C:
  Trace ID:  100000000000000001
  Parent ID: 100000000000000456
  Span ID:   100000000000000789
  Priority:  1

Via HTTP

For HTTP requests between instrumented applications, this trace metadata is propagated by use of HTTP Request headers:

PropertyTypeHTTP Header name
Trace IDIntegerx-datadog-trace-id
Parent Span IDIntegerx-datadog-parent-id
Sampling PriorityIntegerx-datadog-sampling-priority

Such that:

Service A:
  Trace ID:  100000000000000001
  Parent ID: 0
  Span ID:   100000000000000123
  Priority:  1

  |
  | Service B HTTP Request:
  |   Headers:
  |     x-datadog-trace-id:          100000000000000001
  |     x-datadog-parent-id:         100000000000000123
  |     x-datadog-sampling-priority: 1
  |
  V

Service B:
  Trace ID:  100000000000000001
  Parent ID: 100000000000000123
  Span ID:   100000000000000456
  Priority:  1

  |
  | Service C HTTP Request:
  |   Headers:
  |     x-datadog-trace-id:          100000000000000001
  |     x-datadog-parent-id:         100000000000000456
  |     x-datadog-sampling-priority: 1
  |
  V

Service C:
  Trace ID:  100000000000000001
  Parent ID: 100000000000000456
  Span ID:   100000000000000789
  Priority:  1

Distributed header formats

Tracing supports the following distributed trace formats:

You can enable/disable the use of these formats via Datadog.configure:

Datadog.configure do |c|
  # List of header formats that should be extracted
  c.tracing.distributed_tracing.propagation_extract_style = [ 'tracecontext', 'Datadog', 'b3' ]

  # List of header formats that should be injected
  c.tracing.distributed_tracing.propagation_inject_style = [ 'tracecontext', 'Datadog' ]
end

Activating distributed tracing for integrations

Many integrations included in ddtrace support distributed tracing. Distributed tracing is enabled by default in Agent v7 and most versions of Agent v6. If needed, you can activate distributed tracing with configuration settings.

  • If your application receives requests from services with distributed tracing activated, you must activate distributed tracing on the integrations that handle these requests (e.g. Rails)
  • If your application send requests to services with distributed tracing activated, you must activate distributed tracing on the integrations that send these requests (e.g. Faraday)
  • If your application both sends and receives requests implementing distributed tracing, it must activate all integrations that handle these requests.

For more details on how to activate distributed tracing for integrations, see their documentation:

Using the HTTP propagator

To make the process of propagating this metadata easier, you can use the Datadog::Tracing::Propagation::HTTP module.

On the client:

Datadog::Tracing.trace('web.call') do |span, trace|
  # Inject trace headers into request headers (`env` must be a Hash)
  Datadog::Tracing::Propagation::HTTP.inject!(trace.to_digest, env)
end

On the server:

trace_digest = Datadog::Tracing::Propagation::HTTP.extract(request.env)

Datadog::Tracing.trace('web.work', continue_from: trace_digest) do |span|
  # Do web work...
end

HTTP request queuing

Traces that originate from HTTP requests can be configured to include the time spent in a frontend web server or load balancer queue before the request reaches the Ruby application.

This feature is disabled by default. To activate it, you must add an X-Request-Start or X-Queue-Start header from your web server (i.e., Nginx). The following is an Nginx configuration example:

# /etc/nginx/conf.d/ruby_service.conf
server {
    listen 8080;

    location / {
      proxy_set_header X-Request-Start "t=${msec}";
      proxy_pass http://web:3000;
    }
}

Then you must enable the request queuing feature. The following options are available for the :request_queuing configuration:

OptionDescription
:include_requestA http_server.queue span will be the root span of a trace, including the total time spent processing the request in addition to the time spent waiting for the request to begin being processed. This is the behavior when the configuration is set to true. This is the selected configuration when set to true.
:exclude_requestA http.proxy.request span will be the root span of a trace, with the http.proxy.queue child span duration representing only the time spent waiting for the request to begin being processed. This is an experimental feature!

For Rack-based applications, see the documentation for details.

Processing Pipeline

Some applications might require that traces be altered or filtered out before they are sent to Datadog. The processing pipeline allows you to create processors to define such behavior.

Filtering

You can use the Datadog::Tracing::Pipeline::SpanFilter processor to remove spans, when the block evaluates as truthy:

Datadog::Tracing.before_flush(
  # Remove spans that match a particular resource
  Datadog::Tracing::Pipeline::SpanFilter.new { |span| span.resource =~ /PingController/ },
  # Remove spans that are trafficked to localhost
  Datadog::Tracing::Pipeline::SpanFilter.new { |span| span.get_tag('host') == 'localhost' }
)

Processing

You can use the Datadog::Tracing::Pipeline::SpanProcessor processor to modify spans:

Datadog::Tracing.before_flush(
  # Strip matching text from the resource field
  Datadog::Tracing::Pipeline::SpanProcessor.new { |span| span.resource.gsub!(/password=.*/, '') }
)

Custom processor

Processors can be any object that responds to #call accepting trace as an argument (which is an Array of Datadog::Spans.)

For example, using the short-hand block syntax:

Datadog::Tracing.before_flush do |trace|
   # Processing logic...
   trace
end

For a custom processor class:

class MyCustomProcessor
  def call(trace)
    # Processing logic...
    trace
  end
end

Datadog::Tracing.before_flush(MyCustomProcessor.new)

In both cases, the processor method must return the trace object; this return value will be passed to the next processor in the pipeline.

Caveats

  1. Removed spans will not generate trace metrics, affecting monitors and dashboards.
  2. Removing a span also removes all children spans from the removed span. This prevents orphan spans in the trace graph.
  3. The debug mode logs reports the state of spans before the Processing Pipeline is executed: modified or removed spans will display their original state in debug mode logs.

Trace correlation

In many cases, such as logging, it may be useful to correlate trace IDs to other events or data streams, for easier cross-referencing.

For logging in Rails applications

Automatic

For Rails applications using the default logger (ActiveSupport::TaggedLogging), lograge or semantic_logger, trace correlation injection is enabled by default.

It can be disabled by setting the environment variable DD_LOGS_INJECTION=false.

For logging in Ruby applications

To add correlation IDs to your logger, add a log formatter which retrieves the correlation IDs with Datadog::Tracing.correlation, then add them to the message.

To properly correlate with Datadog logging, be sure the following is present in the log message, in order as they appear:

  • dd.env=<ENV>: Where <ENV> is equal to Datadog::Tracing.correlation.env. Omit if no environment is configured.
  • dd.service=<SERVICE>: Where <SERVICE> is equal to Datadog::Tracing.correlation.service. Omit if no default service name is configured.
  • dd.version=<VERSION>: Where <VERSION> is equal to Datadog::Tracing.correlation.version. Omit if no application version is configured.
  • dd.trace_id=<TRACE_ID>: Where <TRACE_ID> is equal to Datadog::Tracing.correlation.trace_id or 0 if no trace is active during logging.
  • dd.span_id=<SPAN_ID>: Where <SPAN_ID> is equal to Datadog::Tracing.correlation.span_id or 0 if no trace is active during logging.

Datadog::Tracing.log_correlation will return dd.env=<ENV> dd.service=<SERVICE> dd.version=<VERSION> dd.trace_id=<TRACE_ID> dd.span_id=<SPAN_ID>.

If a trace is not active and the application environment & version is not configured, it will return dd.env= dd.service= dd.version= dd.trace_id=0 dd.span_id=0.

An example of this in practice:

require 'ddtrace'
require 'logger'

ENV['DD_ENV'] = 'production'
ENV['DD_SERVICE'] = 'billing-api'
ENV['DD_VERSION'] = '2.5.17'

logger = Logger.new(STDOUT)
logger.progname = 'my_app'
logger.formatter  = proc do |severity, datetime, progname, msg|
  "[#{datetime}][#{progname}][#{severity}][#{Datadog::Tracing.log_correlation}] #{msg}\n"
end

# When no trace is active
logger.warn('This is an untraced operation.')
# [2019-01-16 18:38:41 +0000][my_app][WARN][dd.env=production dd.service=billing-api dd.version=2.5.17 dd.trace_id=0 dd.span_id=0] This is an untraced operation.

# When a trace is active
Datadog::Tracing.trace('my.operation') { logger.warn('This is a traced operation.') }
# [2019-01-16 18:38:41 +0000][my_app][WARN][dd.env=production dd.service=billing-api dd.version=2.5.17 dd.trace_id=8545847825299552251 dd.span_id=3711755234730770098] This is a traced operation.

Configuring the transport layer

By default, ddtrace will connect to the Agent using the first available settings in the listed priority:

  1. Through any explicitly provided configuration settings (hostname/port/transport)
  2. Through Unix Domain Socket (UDS) located at /var/run/datadog/apm.socket
  3. Through HTTP over TCP to 127.0.0.1:8126

However, the tracer can be configured to send its trace data to alternative destinations, or by alternative protocols.

Changing default Agent hostname and port

To change the Agent host or port, provide DD_AGENT_HOST and DD_TRACE_AGENT_PORT.

OR within a Datadog.configure block, provide the following settings:

Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.agent.host = '127.0.0.1'
  c.agent.port = 8126
end

See Additional Configuration for more details.

Using the Net::HTTP adapter

The Net adapter submits traces using Net::HTTP over TCP. It is the default transport adapter.

Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.tracing.transport_options = proc { |t|
    # Hostname, port, and additional options. :timeout is in seconds.
    t.adapter :net_http, '127.0.0.1', 8126, timeout: 30
  }
end

Using the Unix Domain Socket (UDS) adapter

The UnixSocket adapter submits traces using Net::HTTP over Unix socket.

To use, first configure your trace Agent to listen by Unix socket, then configure the tracer with:

Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.tracing.transport_options = proc { |t|
    # Provide local path to trace Agent Unix socket
    t.adapter :unix, '/tmp/ddagent/trace.sock'
  }
end

Using the transport test adapter

The Test adapter is a no-op transport that can optionally buffer requests. For use in test suites or other non-production environments.

Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.tracing.transport_options = proc { |t|
    # Set transport to no-op mode. Does not retain traces.
    t.adapter :test

    # Alternatively, you can provide a buffer to examine trace output.
    # The buffer must respond to '<<'.
    t.adapter :test, []
  }
end

Using a custom transport adapter

Custom adapters can be configured with:

Datadog.configure do |c|
  c.tracing.transport_options = proc { |t|
    # Initialize and pass an instance of the adapter
    custom_adapter = CustomAdapter.new
    t.adapter custom_adapter
  }
end

Setting the time provider

By default, tracing uses a monotonic clock to measure the duration of spans, and timestamps (->{ Time.now }) for the start and end time.

When testing, it might be helpful to use a different time provider.

To change the function that provides timestamps, configure the following:

Datadog.configure do |c|
  # For Timecop, for example, `->{ Time.now_without_mock_time }` allows the tracer to use the real wall time.
  c.time_now_provider = -> { Time.now_without_mock_time }
end

Span duration calculation will still use the system monotonic clock when available, thus not being affected by this setting.

Metrics

The tracer and its integrations can produce some additional metrics that can provide useful insight into the performance of your application. These metrics are collected with dogstatsd-ruby, and can be sent to the same Datadog agent to which you send your traces.

To configure your application for metrics collection:

  1. Configure your Datadog Agent for StatsD
  2. Add gem 'dogstatsd-ruby', '~> 5.3' to your Gemfile

For application runtime

If runtime metrics are configured, the trace library will automatically collect and send metrics about the health of your application.

To configure runtime metrics, add the following configuration:

# config/initializers/datadog.rb
require 'datadog/statsd'
require 'ddtrace'

Datadog.configure do |c|
  # To enable runtime metrics collection, set `true`. Defaults to `false`
  # You can also set DD_RUNTIME_METRICS_ENABLED=true to configure this.
  c.runtime_metrics.enabled = true

  # Optionally, you can configure the Statsd instance used for sending runtime metrics.
  # Statsd is automatically configured with default settings if `dogstatsd-ruby` is available.
  # You can configure with host and port of Datadog Agent; defaults to 'localhost:8125'.
  c.runtime_metrics.statsd = Datadog::Statsd.new
end

See the Dogstatsd documentation for more details about configuring Datadog::Statsd.

The stats are VM specific and will include:

NameTypeDescriptionAvailable on
runtime.ruby.class_countgaugeNumber of classes in memory space.CRuby
runtime.ruby.gc.*gaugeGarbage collection statistics: collected from GC.stat.All runtimes
runtime.ruby.yjit.*gaugeYJIT statistics collected from RubyVM::YJIT.runtime_stats.CRuby (if enabled)
runtime.ruby.thread_countgaugeNumber of threads.All runtimes
runtime.ruby.global_constant_stategaugeGlobal constant cache generation.CRuby ≤ 3.1
runtime.ruby.global_method_stategaugeGlobal method cache generation.CRuby 2.x
runtime.ruby.constant_cache_invalidationsgaugeConstant cache invalidations.CRuby ≥ 3.2
runtime.ruby.constant_cache_missesgaugeConstant cache misses.CRuby ≥ 3.2

In addition, all metrics include the following tags:

NameDescription
languageProgramming language traced. (e.g. ruby)
serviceList of services this associated with this metric.

OpenTracing

For setting up Datadog with OpenTracing, see our Configuring OpenTracing section for details.

Configuring Datadog tracer settings

The underlying Datadog tracer can be configured by passing options (which match Datadog::Tracer) when configuring the global tracer:

# Where `options` is a Hash of options provided to Datadog::Tracer
OpenTracing.global_tracer = Datadog::OpenTracer::Tracer.new(**options)

It can also be configured by using Datadog.configure described in the Additional Configuration section.

Activating and configuring integrations

By default, configuring OpenTracing with Datadog will not automatically activate any additional instrumentation provided by Datadog. You will only receive spans and traces from OpenTracing instrumentation you have in your application.

However, additional instrumentation provided by Datadog can be activated alongside OpenTracing using Datadog.configure, which can be used to enhance your tracing further. To activate this, see Integration instrumentation for more details.

Supported serialization formats

TypeSupported?Additional information
OpenTracing::FORMAT_TEXT_MAPYes
OpenTracing::FORMAT_RACKYesBecause of the loss of resolution in the Rack format, please note that baggage items with names containing either upper case characters or - will be converted to lower case and _ in a round-trip respectively. We recommend avoiding these characters or accommodating accordingly on the receiving end.
OpenTracing::FORMAT_BINARYNo

Profiling

ddtrace can produce profiles that measure method-level application resource usage within production environments. These profiles can give insight into resources spent in Ruby code outside of existing trace instrumentation.

Setup

To get started with profiling, follow the Enabling the Ruby Profiler guide.

Troubleshooting

If you run into issues with profiling, please check the Profiler Troubleshooting Guide.

Profiling Resque jobs

When profiling Resque jobs, you should set the RUN_AT_EXIT_HOOKS=1 option described in the Resque documentation.

Without this flag, profiles for short-lived Resque jobs will not be available as Resque kills worker processes before they have a chance to submit this information.

Known issues and suggested configurations

Payload too large

By default, Datadog limits the size of trace payloads to prevent memory overhead within instrumented applications. As a result, traces containing thousands of operations may not be sent to Datadog.

If traces are missing, enable debug mode to check if messages containing "Dropping trace. Payload too large" are logged.

Since debug mode is verbose, Datadog does not recommend leaving this enabled or enabling this in production. Disable it after confirming. You can inspect the Datadog Agent logs for similar messages.

If you have confirmed that traces are dropped due to large payloads, then enable the partial_flush setting to break down large traces into smaller chunks.

Stack level too deep

Datadog tracing collects trace data by adding instrumentation into other common libraries (e.g. Rails, Rack, etc.) Some libraries provide APIs to add this instrumentation, but some do not. In order to add instrumentation into libraries lacking an instrumentation API, Datadog uses a technique called “monkey-patching” to modify the code of that library.

In Ruby version 1.9.3 and earlier, “monkey-patching” often involved the use of alias_method, also known as method rewriting, to destructively replace existing Ruby methods. However, this practice would often create conflicts & errors if two libraries attempted to “rewrite” the same method. (e.g. two different APM packages trying to instrument the same method.)

In Ruby 2.0, the Module#prepend feature was introduced. This feature avoids destructive method rewriting and allows multiple “monkey patches” on the same method. Consequently, it has become the safest, preferred means to “monkey patch” code.

Datadog instrumentation almost exclusively uses the Module#prepend feature to add instrumentation non-destructively. However, some other libraries (typically those supporting Ruby < 2.0) still use alias_method which can create conflicts with Datadog instrumentation, often resulting in SystemStackError or stack level too deep errors.

As the implementation of alias_method exists within those libraries, Datadog generally cannot fix them. However, some libraries have known workarounds:

For libraries without a known workaround, consider removing the library using alias or Module#alias_method or separating libraries into different environments for testing.

For any further questions or to report an occurrence of this issue, please reach out to Datadog support

Resque workers hang on exit

Resque’s default of forking a process per job can, in rare situations, result in resque processes hanging on exit when instrumented with ddtrace.

As a workaround, we recommend setting the FORK_PER_JOB environment variable to false to disable this behavior.

See this issue for a discussion of the problem.