Spring Boot

How to instrument Spring Boot with OpenTelemetry

The OpenTelemetry Java agent with byte code instrumentation can cover most of your needs when instrumenting Spring Boot applications.

Alternatively, the OpenTelemetry Spring Boot starter can help you in the following cases:

• Spring Boot Native image applications for which the OpenTelemetry Java agent does not work
• Startup overhead of the OpenTelemetry Java agent exceeds your requirements
• OpenTelemetry Java agent might not work if your application already uses another Java monitoring agent
• You can use the Spring Boot configuration files (application.properties, application.yml) to configure the OpenTelemetry Spring Boot starter which doesn’t work with the OpenTelemetry Java agent

The OpenTelemetry Java agent has more automatic instrumentation features than the OpenTelemetry starter.

You can use OpenTelemetry instrumentations libraries to complete the automatic instrumentation of the Spring Boot starter.

OpenTelemetry Spring Boot starter

Compatibility

The OpenTelemetry Spring Boot starter works with Spring Boot 2.0 and 3.0, and Spring Boot native image applications. The opentelemetry-java-examples/spring-native repository contains an example of a Spring Boot Native image application instrumented using the OpenTelemetry Spring Boot starter.

Dependency management

A Bill of Material (BOM) ensures that versions of dependencies (including transitive ones) are aligned.

Importing the opentelemetry-bom and opentelemetry-instrumentation-bom-alpha BOMs when using the OpenTelemetry starter is important to ensure version alignment across all OpenTelemetry dependencies.

The following example shows how to import both BOMs using Maven:

<dependencyManagement>
    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>io.opentelemetry</groupId>
            <artifactId>opentelemetry-bom</artifactId>
            <version>1.35.0</version>
            <type>pom</type>
            <scope>import</scope>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>io.opentelemetry.instrumentation</groupId>
            <artifactId>opentelemetry-instrumentation-bom-alpha</artifactId>
            <version>2.1.0-alpha</version>
            <type>pom</type>
            <scope>import</scope>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>
</dependencyManagement>

With Gradle and Spring Boot, you have two ways to import a BOM.

You can use the Gradle’s native BOM support by adding dependencies:

import org.springframework.boot.gradle.plugin.SpringBootPlugin

plugins {
  id("java")
  id("org.springframework.boot") version "3.2.O"
}

dependencies {
  implementation(platform(SpringBootPlugin.BOM_COORDINATES))
  implementation(platform("io.opentelemetry:opentelemetry-bom:1.35.0"))
  implementation(platform("io.opentelemetry.instrumentation:opentelemetry-instrumentation-bom-alpha:2.1.0-alpha"))
}

The other way with Gradle is to use the io.spring.dependency-management plugin and to import the BOMs in dependencyManagement:

plugins {
  id("java")
  id("org.springframework.boot") version "3.2.O"
  id("io.spring.dependency-management") version "1.1.0"
}

dependencyManagement {
  imports {
    mavenBom("io.opentelemetry:opentelemetry-bom:1.35.0")
    mavenBom("io.opentelemetry.instrumentation:opentelemetry-instrumentation-bom-alpha:2.1.0-alpha")
  }
}

OpenTelemetry Starter dependency

Add the dependency given below to enable the OpenTelemetry starter.

The OpenTelemetry starter uses OpenTelemetry Spring Boot autoconfiguration. For details concerning supported libraries and features of the OpenTelemetry autoconfiguration, see the configuration README.

• Maven (pom.xml)
• Gradle (gradle.build)

<dependencies>
	<dependency>
		<groupId>io.opentelemetry.instrumentation</groupId>
		<artifactId>opentelemetry-spring-boot-starter</artifactId>
	</dependency>
</dependencies>

dependencies {
	implementation("io.opentelemetry.instrumentation:opentelemetry-spring-boot-starter")
}

Configuration

This spring starter supports configuration metadata, which means that you can see and autocomplete all available properties in your IDE.

Disable the OpenTelemetry Starter

OpenTelemetry Data Exporters

This package provides autoconfiguration the following exporters:

• OTLP
• Logging

All available properties are listed in the Configuration page.

The only difference is that the OpenTelemetry Spring Boot starter uses http/protobuf as the default protocol for the OTLP exporter (as of 2.0.0+).

Tracer Properties

Resource Properties

otel.resource.attributes supports a pattern-based resource configuration in the application.properties like this:

otel.resource.attributes.environment=dev
otel.resource.attributes.xyz=foo

It’s also possible to specify the resource attributes in application.yaml:

otel:
  resource:
    attributes:
      environment: dev
      xyz: foo

Finally, the resource attributes can be specified as a comma-separated list, as described in the specification:

export OTEL_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTES="key1=value1,key2=value2"

The service name is determined by the following precedence rules, in accordance with the OpenTelemetry specification:

1. otel.service.name spring property or OTEL_SERVICE_NAME environment variable (highest precedence)
2. service.name in otel.resource.attributes system/spring property or OTEL_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTES environment variable
3. spring.application.name spring property
4. The default value is unknown_service:java (lowest precedence)

Automatic instrumentation

Automatic instrumentation is available for several frameworks:

Logback

You can enable experimental features with system properties to capture attributes :

Alternatively, you can enable these features by adding the OpenTelemetry Logback appender in your logback.xml or logback-spring.xml file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configuration>
	<appender name="console" class="ch.qos.logback.core.ConsoleAppender">
		<encoder>
			<pattern>
				%d{HH:mm:ss.SSS} [%thread] %-5level %logger{36} - %msg%n
			</pattern>
		</encoder>
	</appender>
	<appender name="OpenTelemetry"
		class="io.opentelemetry.instrumentation.logback.appender.v1_0.OpenTelemetryAppender ">
		<captureExperimentalAttributes>false</captureExperimentalAttributes>
		<captureCodeAttributes>true</captureCodeAttributes>
		<captureMarkerAttribute>true</captureMarkerAttribute>
		<captureKeyValuePairAttributes>true</captureKeyValuePairAttributes>
		<captureLoggerContext>true</captureLoggerContext>
		<captureMdcAttributes>*</captureMdcAttributes>
	</appender>
	<root level="INFO">
		<appender-ref ref="console"/>
		<appender-ref ref="OpenTelemetry"/>
	</root>
</configuration>

Spring Web Autoconfiguration

Provides autoconfiguration for the RestTemplate trace interceptor defined in opentelemetry-spring-web-3.1. This autoconfiguration instruments all requests sent using Spring RestTemplate beans by applying a RestTemplate bean post processor. This feature is supported for spring web versions 3.1+. To learn more about the OpenTelemetry RestTemplate interceptor, see opentelemetry-spring-web-3.1.

Spring Web MVC Autoconfiguration

This feature autoconfigures instrumentation for Spring WebMVC controllers by adding a telemetry producing servlet Filter bean to the application context. The filter decorates the request execution with a server span, propagating the incoming tracing context if received in the HTTP request. To learn more about the OpenTelemetry Spring WebMVC instrumentation, see the opentelemetry-spring-webmvc-5.3 instrumentation library.

Spring WebFlux Autoconfiguration

Provides autoconfigurations for the OpenTelemetry WebClient ExchangeFilter defined in opentelemetry-spring-webflux-5.3. This autoconfiguration instruments all outgoing HTTP requests sent using Spring’s WebClient and WebClient Builder beans by applying a bean post processor. This feature is supported for spring webflux versions 5.0+. For details, see opentelemetry-spring-webflux-5.3.

Additional Instrumentations

JDBC Instrumentation

You have two ways to enable the JDBC instrumentation with the OpenTelemetry starter.

If your application does not declare DataSource bean, you can update your application.properties file to have the data source URL starting with jdbc:otel: and set the driver class to io.opentelemetry.instrumentation.jdbc.OpenTelemetryDriver.

spring.datasource.url=jdbc:otel:h2:mem:db
spring.datasource.driver-class-name=io.opentelemetry.instrumentation.jdbc.OpenTelemetryDriver

You can also wrap the DataSource bean in an io.opentelemetry.instrumentation.jdbc.datasource.OpenTelemetryDataSource:

import io.opentelemetry.instrumentation.jdbc.datasource.JdbcTelemetry;

@Configuration
public class DataSourceConfig {

	@Bean
	public DataSource dataSource(OpenTelemetry openTelemetry) {
		DataSourceBuilder dataSourceBuilder = DataSourceBuilder.create();
		//Data source configurations
		DataSource dataSource = dataSourceBuilder.build();
		return JdbcTelemetry.create(openTelemetry).wrap(dataSource);
	}

}

With the datasource configuration, you need to add the following dependency:

• Maven (pom.xml)
• Gradle (gradle.build)

<dependencies>
	<dependency>
		<groupId>io.opentelemetry.instrumentation</groupId>
		<artifactId>opentelemetry-jdbc</artifactId>
	</dependency>
</dependencies>

dependencies {
	implementation("io.opentelemetry.instrumentation:opentelemetry-jdbc")
}

Log4j2 Instrumentation

You have to add the OpenTelemetry appender to your log4j2.xml file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Configuration status="WARN" packages="io.opentelemetry.instrumentation.log4j.appender.v2_17">
	<Appenders>
		<OpenTelemetry name="OpenTelemetryAppender"/>
	</Appenders>
	<Loggers>
		<Root>
			<AppenderRef ref="OpenTelemetryAppender" level="All"/>
		</Root>
	</Loggers>
</Configuration>

You can find more configuration options for the OpenTelemetry appender in the Log4j instrumentation library.

Instrumentation Annotations

This feature uses spring-aop to wrap methods annotated with @WithSpan in a span. The arguments to the method can be captured as attributed on the created span by annotating the method parameters with @SpanAttribute.

Note: this annotation can only be applied to bean methods managed by the spring application context. To learn more about aspect weaving in spring, see spring-aop.

Dependency

• Maven (pom.xml)
• Gradle (gradle.build)

<dependencies>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-aop</artifactId>
    <version>SPRING_VERSION</version>
  </dependency>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>io.opentelemetry</groupId>
    <artifactId>opentelemetry-instrumentation-annotations</artifactId>
    <version>2.1.0</version>
  </dependency>
</dependencies>

dependencies {
  implementation("org.springframework:spring-aop:SPRING_VERSION")
  implementation("io.opentelemetry:opentelemetry-extension-annotations:1.35.0")
}

Usage

import org.springframework.stereotype.Component;

import io.opentelemetry.instrumentation.annotations.SpanAttribute;
import io.opentelemetry.instrumentation.annotations.WithSpan;
import io.opentelemetry.api.trace.Span;
import io.opentelemetry.api.trace.SpanKind;

/**
 * Test WithSpan
 */
@Component
public class TracedClass {

    @WithSpan
    public void tracedMethod() {
    }

    @WithSpan(value="span name")
    public void tracedMethodWithName() {
        Span currentSpan = Span.current();
        currentSpan.addEvent("ADD EVENT TO tracedMethodWithName SPAN");
        currentSpan.setAttribute("isTestAttribute", true);
    }

    @WithSpan(kind = SpanKind.CLIENT)
    public void tracedClientSpan() {
    }

    public void tracedMethodWithAttribute(@SpanAttribute("attributeName") String parameter) {
    }
}

OpenTelemetry instrumentations libraries

You can configure other instrumentations with OpenTelemetry instrumentations libraries.

Other solutions

Instead of using the OpenTelemetry Spring starter, you can use the OpenTelemetry autoconfiguration features with an annotation or the Zipkin starter.

Spring support

Autoconfiguration is natively supported by Spring Boot applications. To enable these features in “vanilla” use @EnableOpenTelemetry to complete a component scan of this package.

import io.opentelemetry.instrumentation.spring.autoconfigure.EnableOpenTelemetry;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Configuration;

@Configuration
@EnableOpenTelemetry
public class OpenTelemetryConfig {}

Zipkin starter

OpenTelemetry Zipkin Exporter Starter is a starter package that includes the opentelemetry-api, opentelemetry-sdk, opentelemetry-extension-annotations, opentelemetry-logging-exporter, opentelemetry-spring-boot-autoconfigurations and spring framework starters required to setup distributed tracing. It also provides the opentelemetry-exporters-zipkin artifact and corresponding exporter autoconfiguration. Check out opentelemetry-spring-boot-autoconfigure for the list of supported libraries and features.

If an exporter is present in the classpath during runtime and a spring bean of the exporter is missing from the spring application context, an exporter bean is initialized and added to a simple span processor in the active tracer provider. Check out the implementation here.

• Maven (pom.xml)
• Gradle (gradle.build)

<dependencies>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>io.opentelemetry</groupId>
    <artifactId>opentelemetry-exporter-zipkin</artifactId>
    <version>1.35.0</version>
  </dependency>
</dependencies>

dependencies {
  implementation("io.opentelemetry:opentelemetry-exporter-zipkin:1.35.0")
}

Configurations