OpenTelemetry

Since Camel 3.5

The OpenTelemetry component is used for tracing and timing incoming and outgoing Camel messages using OpenTelemetry.

Events (spans) are captured for incoming and outgoing messages being sent to/from Camel.

Configuration

The configuration properties for the OpenTelemetry tracer are:

Option	Default	Description
instrumentationName	camel	A name uniquely identifying the instrumentation scope, such as the instrumentation library, package, or fully qualified class name. Must not be null.
excludePatterns		Sets exclude pattern(s) that will disable tracing for Camel messages that matches the pattern. The content is a Set<String> where the key is a pattern. The pattern uses the rules from Intercept.
encoding	false	Sets whether the header keys need to be encoded (connector specific) or not. The value is a boolean. Dashes need for instances to be encoded for JMS property keys.

Option

Default

Description

instrumentationName

camel

A name uniquely identifying the instrumentation scope, such as the instrumentation library, package, or fully qualified class name. Must not be null.

excludePatterns

Sets exclude pattern(s) that will disable tracing for Camel messages that matches the pattern. The content is a Set<String> where the key is a pattern. The pattern uses the rules from Intercept.

encoding

false

Sets whether the header keys need to be encoded (connector specific) or not. The value is a boolean. Dashes need for instances to be encoded for JMS property keys.

Using Camel OpenTelemetry

Include the camel-opentelemetry component in your POM, along with any specific dependencies associated with the chosen OpenTelemetry compliant Tracer.

To explicitly configure OpenTelemetry support, instantiate the OpenTelemetryTracer and initialize the camel context. You can optionally specify a Tracer, or alternatively it can be implicitly discovered using the Registry

OpenTelemetryTracer otelTracer = new OpenTelemetryTracer();
// By default it uses the DefaultTracer, but you can override it with a specific OpenTelemetry Tracer implementation.
otelTracer.setTracer(...);
// And then initialize the context
otelTracer.init(camelContext);

You would still need OpenTelemetry to instrument your code, which can be done via a Java agent (see further below).

Using with standalone Camel

If you use camel-main as standalone Camel, then you can enable and use OpenTelemetry without Java code.

Add camel-opentelemetry component in your POM, and configure in application.properties:

camel.opentelemetry.enabled = true
# you can confiure the other options
# camel.opentelemetry.instrumentationName = myApp

You would still need OpenTelemetry to instrument your code, which can be done via a Java agent (see further below).

Spring Boot

If you are using Spring Boot then you can add the camel-opentelemetry-starter dependency, and turn on OpenTracing by annotating the main class with @CamelOpenTelemetry.

The OpenTelemetryTracer will be implicitly obtained from the camel context’s Registry, unless a OpenTelemetryTracer bean has been defined by the application.

Java Agent

Download the latest version.

This package includes the instrumentation agent as well as instrumentations for all supported libraries and all available data exporters. The package provides a completely automatic, out-of-the-box experience.

Enable the instrumentation agent using the -javaagent flag to the JVM.

java -javaagent:path/to/opentelemetry-javaagent.jar \
     -jar myapp.jar

By default, the OpenTelemetry Java agent uses OTLP exporter configured to send data to OpenTelemetry collector at http://localhost:4317.

Configuration parameters are passed as Java system properties (-D flags) or as environment variables. See the configuration documentation for the full list of configuration items. For example:

java -javaagent:path/to/opentelemetry-javaagent.jar \
     -Dotel.service.name=your-service-name \
     -Dotel.traces.exporter=jaeger \
     -jar myapp.jar

MDC Logging

When MDC Logging is enabled for the active Camel context the Trace ID and Span ID will be added and removed from the MDC for each route, the keys are trace_id and span_id, respectively.