OpenCensus - A stats collection and distributed tracing framework

This is the open-source release of Census for Ruby. Census provides a
framework to measure a server's resource usage and collect performance stats.

This repository contains the source to the opencensus Rubygem, which contains
the core OpenCensus APIs and basic integrations with Rails, Faraday, and GRPC.
Additional integrations, including exporters to popular analytics services,
will be available in separate gems.

The library is in alpha stage, and the API is subject to change.

Quick Start

Installation

Install the gem directly:

$ gem install opencensus

Or install through Bundler:

1. Add the opencensus gem to your Gemfile:

gem "opencensus"

2. Use Bundler to install the gem:

$ bundle install

Getting started with Ruby on Rails

The OpenCensus library provides a Railtie that integrates with Ruby On Rails,
automatically tracing incoming requests in the application. It also
automatically traces key processes in your application such as database queries
and view rendering.

To enable Rails integration, require this file during application startup:

# In config/application.rb
require "opencensus/trace/integrations/rails"

See the documentation for the
Rails integration class
for more information.

Getting started with other Rack-based frameworks

Other Rack-based frameworks, such as Sinatra, can use the Rack Middleware
integration, which automatically traces incoming requests. To enable the
integration for a non-Rails Rack framework, add the middleware to your
middleware stack.

# In config.ru or similar Rack configuration file
require "opencensus/trace/integrations/rack_middleware"
use OpenCensus::Trace::Integrations::RackMiddleware

Instrumentation features

Tracing outgoing HTTP requests

If your app uses the Faraday library
to make outgoing HTTP requests, consider installing the Faraday Middleware
integration. This integration creates a span for each outgoing Faraday request,
tracking the latency of that request, and propagates distributed trace headers
into the request so you can potentially connect your request trace with that of
the remote service. Here is an example:

require "opencensus/trace/integrations/rack_middleware"
conn = Faraday.new(url: "http://www.example.com") do |c|
  c.use OpenCensus::Trace::Integrations::FaradayMiddleware
  c.adapter Faraday.default_adapter
end
conn.get "/"

See the documentation for the
FaradayMiddleware
class for more info.

Adding Custom Trace Spans

In addition to the spans added by the Rails integration (e.g. for database
queries) and by Faraday integration for outgoing HTTP requests, you can add
additional custom spans to the request trace:

OpenCensus::Trace.in_span "my_task" do |span|
  # Do stuff...
  
  OpenCensus::Trace.in_span "my_subtask" do |subspan|
    # Do other stuff
  end
end

See the documentation for the
OpenCensus::Trace
module for more info.

Exporting traces

By default, OpenCensus will log request trace data as JSON. To export traces to
your favorite analytics backend, install an export plugin.

The provided exporters are:

You may also create your own
Exporter

Configuring the library

OpenCensus allows configuration of a number of aspects via the configuration
class. The following example illustrates how that looks:

OpenCensus.configure do |c|
  c.trace.default_sampler = OpenCensus::Trace::Samplers::AlwaysSample.new
  c.trace.default_max_attributes = 16
end

If you are using Rails, you can equivalently use the Rails config:

config.opencensus.trace.default_sampler =
  OpenCensus::Trace::Samplers::AlwaysSample.new
config.opencensus.trace.default_max_attributes = 16

You can configure a variety of core OpenCensus options, including:

• Sampling, which controls how often a request is traced.
• Exporting, which controls how trace information is reported.
• Formatting, which controls how distributed request trace headers are
  constructed
• Size maximums, which control when trace data is truncated.

Additionally, integrations and other plugins might have their own
configurations.

For more information, consult the documentation for
OpenCensus.configure
and
OpenCensus::Trace.configure.

About the library

Supported Ruby Versions

This library is supported on Ruby 2.2+.

However, Ruby 2.3 or later is strongly recommended, as earlier releases have
reached or are nearing end-of-life. After June 1, 2018, OpenCensus will provide
official support only for Ruby versions that are considered current and
supported by Ruby Core (that is, Ruby versions that are either in normal
maintenance or in security maintenance).
See https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/downloads/branches/ for further details.

Versioning

This library follows Semantic Versioning.

It is currently in major version zero (0.y.z), which means that anything may
change at any time, and the public API should not be considered stable.

Contributing

Contributions to this library are always welcome and highly encouraged.

See the Contributing Guide for more information on how to get
started.

Please note that this project is released with a Contributor Code of Conduct. By
participating in this project you agree to abide by its terms. See
Code of Conduct for more information.

License

This library is licensed under Apache 2.0. Full license text is available in
LICENSE.

Disclaimer

This is not an official Google product.