clj-otel

clj-otel provides a small idiomatic Clojure API for adding telemetry to your libraries and applications using OpenTelemetry, an emerging standard for telemetry in cloud-native software, enabling effective observability.

Figure 1. A distributed trace displayed in Honeycomb

Figure 2. Metrics for an HTTP server route displayed on a Grafana dashboard

Requirements

clj-otel is tested with Clojure 1.11.1 and is based on the reference OpenTelemetry for Java implementation, which supports Java 8 and higher.

Quickstart

clj-otel is highly configurable and may be used in many ways. This quickstart briefly outlines getting started in a local environment. Find more in-depth information on clj-otel in the documentation and examples.

• To add manual instrumentation to your library or application at design time

  • Add project dependency

    deps.edn

    {;; ...
     :deps {com.github.steffan-westcott/clj-otel-api {:mvn/version "0.2.7"}}}

  • To add traces telemetry, use Clojure functions such as steffan-westcott.clj-otel.api.trace.span/with-span! to create spans with attributes

    (defn validate-profile [profile]
      (span/with-span! ["Validating profile" {:system/profile-id (:id profile)}]
        (validate profile)))

  • To add metrics telemetry, use Clojure functions in steffan-westcott.clj-otel.api.metrics.instrument to create instruments, then add or record measurements with attributes

    (defonce set-password-failure-count
      (instrument/instrument {:name "app.set-password-failure-count"
                              :instrument-type :counter}))
    
    (instrument/add! set-password-failure-count {:value 1
                                                 :attributes {:reason :too-short}})

• To export telemetry data (from both manual and automatic instrumentation) from an application at runtime

  • Download the latest OpenTelemetry instrumentation JAR opentelemetry-javaagent.jar from the OpenTelemetry instrumentation agent releases page.

  • Add the following JVM options to your application, assuming export of traces telemetry only to an OTLP compliant backend such as Jaeger

    "-javaagent:opentelemetry-javaagent.jar"
    "-Dotel.resource.attributes=service.name=NAME-OF-YOUR-SERVICE"
    "-Dotel.metrics.exporter=none"
    "-Dotel.logs.exporter=none"

• To receive exported telemetry data

  • Prepare a telemetry backend such as Jaeger

    docker run --rm                            \
               -p 16686:16686                  \
               -p 4318:4318                    \
               jaegertracing/all-in-one:1.58.1

• To explore application behaviour described by the received telemetry data

  • Use telemetry backend features such as the Jaeger user interface at http://localhost:16686/search

ℹ️	For demonstration configurations that export traces and metrics telemetry, see the examples.

Documentation

• Tutorial : A walk-through of instrumenting a small Clojure program and viewing its telemetry.

• Guides : Common task recipes for adding telemetry to your Clojure libraries and applications, then configuring and running applications with telemetry.

• API & Reference : API documentation for all clj-otel modules.

• Concepts : A primer on observability, OpenTelemetry and what this project clj-otel enables for Clojure libraries and applications.

Examples

Find complete example applications in the examples directory. The examples aim to show:

• Adding automatic and manual instrumentation to applications

• Configuring and running applications that export telemetry data

• Viewing telemetry data in backends

See more information on configuring and running the examples.

Project status

• clj-otel is a young, alpha grade project with limited use in a production setting. Breaking API changes may still be made, but there should be few, if any.

• For manual instrumentation:

  • Coverage of the Traces API is complete.

    • Trace semantics conventions support for recording exceptions is complete.

    • Trace semantics support for HTTP spans in applications run without the OpenTelemetry instrumentation agent is limited.

    • Support for wrapping asynchronous Clojure code in spans is complete. The API is minimal and low-level, supporting any async library that works with callbacks. Perhaps with community feedback, this will be expanded to add more specialised support for popular async libraries. Code for creating spans around core.async channels can be found in the examples, specifically the <with-span-binding macro.

  • Coverage of the Metrics API is complete.

    • Metrics HTTP semantics support for applications run without the OpenTelemetry instrumentation agent is very limited.

  • There is currently no coverage of the Logs API.

• For the programmatic configuration of the OpenTelemetry SDK:

  • Coverage of Traces TracerProvider is complete.

  • Coverage of Metrics MeterProvider is in progress. Most configuration options are supported, but some public details of the OpenTelemetry Java SDK are not yet stable.

  • There is currently no coverage of Logging LoggerProvider.

TODO

• For manual instrumentation:

  • Add Logs API support.

  • Consider supporting more trace semantics conventions.

• Maintain parity with the latest version of opentelemetry-java.

• Implement integration tests using clj-test-containers or similar.

• Consider ClojureScript OpenTelemetry support in the browser and node.js using opentelemetry-js; this will likely be a separate project.

Changelog

See changelog

Contributing & contact

The most needed contribution is experience reports of clj-otel use in production systems. I am keen to hear of usages of clj-otel and any problems and successes. clj-otel is a very young project, so now is an ideal time to provide feedback on the API design as improvements can be made freely.

I will be happy to consider pull requests for minor changes, but I may not accept more significant changes while I make a start on some items in the TODO list.

For questions or feedback on clj-otel, contact me on the #clj-otel channel in Clojurians Slack, user steffan.

Development

Requirements

To develop clj-otel, you should first install the following tools:

• Clojure CLI tools

• clj-kondo executable binary

• zprint executable binary (1.2.7 or later)

Developing

• Get information on available build scripts with this command:

  clojure -A:deps -T:build help/doc

• Before making any pull requests, please ensure the source code has been linted and formatted with these commands:

  clojure -T:build lint
  clojure -T:build fmt

Acknowledgements

I want to thank:

• You (yes, you) for having the curiosity to look into this project. Thank you.

• My friends Golnaz and Nimmo, for pointing me in the direction of observability and OpenTelemetry. Without them, I wouldn’t have had the idea to do this project.

• The OpenTelemetry community and all makers of telemetry backends for making the effective observability of systems a tangible reality. Cloud-native software is so complex now, we need all the help we can get to understand how well it is (or is not) working.

• The Diátaxis Documentation Framework, for a simple way to structure technical documentation.

License

Copyright © 2021-2024 Steffan Westcott
Distributed under the Apache License v2.0