Any disable flag for tracing ?

[santoshkashyap]

Hi,

I have the following tracing.js which is run via the node --require ./src/tracing.js ./src/app.js.

const { diag, DiagConsoleLogger, DiagLogLevel } = require('@opentelemetry/api')
const { OTLPTraceExporter } = require('@opentelemetry/exporter-trace-otlp-http')
const { registerInstrumentations } = require('@opentelemetry/instrumentation')
const { HttpInstrumentation } = require('@opentelemetry/instrumentation-http')
const { Resource } = require('@opentelemetry/resources')
const { BatchSpanProcessor } = require('@opentelemetry/sdk-trace-base')
const { NodeTracerProvider } = require('@opentelemetry/sdk-trace-node')
const { SemanticResourceAttributes } = require('@opentelemetry/semantic-conventions')

const COLLECTOR_URL = 'http://127.0.0.1:4318/v1/traces'

diag.setLogger(new DiagConsoleLogger(), DiagLogLevel.INFO)

// register HttpInstrumentation to trace HTTP requests
registerInstrumentations({
  instrumentations: [new HttpInstrumentation()]
})

/*
 * Create a new trace provider with service name passed as env (eg: SERVICE_NAME=my-app)
 * We can influence the service name via the env "SERVICE_NAME"
 */
const tracerProvider = new NodeTracerProvider({
  resource: new Resource({
    [SemanticResourceAttributes.SERVICE_NAME]: process.env.SERVICE_NAME
  })
})

/*
 *  Ship traces in batches.
 *  The OpenTelemetry collector process is expected to run alongside the main application and is accessible
 *  over localhost:4318 (for http).
 */
const batchProcessor = new BatchSpanProcessor(
  new OTLPTraceExporter({
    url: COLLECTOR_URL
  })
)
tracerProvider.addSpanProcessor(batchProcessor)
tracerProvider.register()

tracer.debug('Completed OpenTelemetry Auto-instrumentation for my-app.')

I have different environments(dev, prod) where the application will be deployed. Is it possible to disable tracing in PROD via some environment variable ?

Alternatively, I'm aware of defining a command without requiring tracing.js as node ./src/app.js. But, unfortunately this option is not possible as there is single place to define this command in our deployment pipeline. It would be nice to have a env variable that disables tracing even though application code is wired with tracing module.

Best,
Santosh

[Flarna]

What's wrong with adding an if (process.env.DISABLED === "true") around above code which setups Otel?

[santoshkashyap]

What's wrong with adding an if (process.env.DISABLED === "true") around above code which setups Otel?

Thanks for the info. Seems like I got influenced by the other instrumentation counter parts: Eg: JavaAgent which supports (-Dotel.javaagent.enabled=false), Spring cloud sleuth spring.sleuth.enabled=false, hence missed it.

Also figured other way to do it using NODE_OPTIONS : Add instrumentation only when required NODE_OPTIONS=--require /src/tracing.js