---
title: Python OpenTracing instrumentation
description: OpenTracing instrumentation for Python
breadcrumbs: >-
  Docs > APM > Application Instrumentation > Code-Based Custom Instrumentation >
  OpenTracing Instrumentation Setup > Python OpenTracing instrumentation
---

# Python OpenTracing instrumentation

{% alert level="info" %}
OpenTracing support is based on a deprecated specification. If you want to instrument your code with an open spec, use OpenTelemetry instead. Try [processing data from OpenTelemetry instrumentation in Datadog SDKs](https://docs.datadoghq.com/tracing/trace_collection/otel_instrumentation/python.md).
{% /alert %}

OpenTracing support is included in the `ddtrace` package. Use `pip` to install the required `opentracing` package:

```sh
pip install ddtrace[opentracing]
```

The OpenTracing convention for initializing a tracer is to define an initialization method that configures and instantiates a new tracer and overwrites the global `opentracing.tracer` reference:

```python
import time
import opentracing
from ddtrace.opentracer import Tracer, set_global_tracer

def init_tracer(service_name):
    config = {
      "agent_hostname": "localhost",
      "agent_port": 8126,
    }
    tracer = Tracer(service_name, config=config)
    set_global_tracer(tracer)
    return tracer

def my_operation():
  span = opentracing.tracer.start_span("<OPERATION_NAME>")
  span.set_tag("<TAG_KEY>", "<TAG_VALUE>")
  time.sleep(0.05)
  span.finish()

init_tracer("<SERVICE_NAME>")
my_operation()
```

The SDK can now be used like in any other OpenTracing application. See [opentracing.io](https://opentracing.io/guides/python/) for OpenTracing Python usage.