Android App in Java Instrumentation

This documentation contains instructions on how to set up OpenTelemetry(OTel) instrumentation in your Android mobile application built using Java. OpenTelemetry, also known as OTel for short, is an open-source observability framework that can help you generate and collect telemetry data - traces, metrics, and logs from your Java application.

Once the telemetry data is generated, you can configure an exporter to send the data to SigNoz for monitoring and visualization.

There are three major steps to using OpenTelemetry:

  • Instrumenting your android application with OpenTelemetry
  • Configuring the exporter to send data to SigNoz
  • Validating the configuration to ensure that data is being sent as expected.

In this tutorial, we will instrument a Java Mobile application (Android) for traces and send it to SigNoz.

Requirements

Java 8 or higher

Send traces directly to SigNoz cloud

Info

You can test sample application for Java

Step 1 : Instrument your application with OpenTelemetry

To configure your Java application to send traces to OpenTelemetry you need to add the following dependencies to the build.gradle file of a module or project

For that, paste the following inside build.gradle of your project.

implementation platform('io.opentelemetry:opentelemetry-bom:1.25.0')
implementation "io.opentelemetry:opentelemetry-api"
implementation "io.opentelemetry:opentelemetry-context"
implementation 'io.opentelemetry:opentelemetry-exporter-otlp'
implementation 'io.opentelemetry:opentelemetry-exporter-logging'
implementation 'io.opentelemetry:opentelemetry-extension-kotlin'
implementation 'io.opentelemetry:opentelemetry-sdk'
implementation 'io.opentelemetry:opentelemetry-semconv'

Step 2: Configure network settings

Create a file named network_security_config.xml in the app/res/xml directory and add the following content to the file

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<network-security-config>
    <domain-config cleartextTrafficPermitted="true">
        <domain includeSubdomains="true">ingest.[REGION].signoz.cloud</domain>
    </domain-config>
</network-security-config>

Add the following content to the app/src/main/AndroidManifest.xml file to allow the application to access the network

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<manifest ...>
  <!-- Add the following line to grant network access permissions. -->
  <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET" />

  <application
    ...
    <!-- Add the following line to configure the network for the domain name to which you want to report data. -->
    android:networkSecurityConfig="@xml/network_security_config"
    ...>

    ...
  </application>

</manifest>

Create a file named OpentelemetryUtl.java with the following content

package com.example.androidjavademo;

import io.opentelemetry.api.OpenTelemetry;
import io.opentelemetry.api.common.Attributes;
import io.opentelemetry.api.trace.Tracer;
import io.opentelemetry.api.trace.propagation.W3CTraceContextPropagator;
import io.opentelemetry.context.propagation.ContextPropagators;
import io.opentelemetry.exporter.logging.LoggingSpanExporter;
import io.opentelemetry.exporter.otlp.trace.OtlpGrpcSpanExporter;
import io.opentelemetry.sdk.OpenTelemetrySdk;
import io.opentelemetry.sdk.resources.Resource;
import io.opentelemetry.sdk.trace.SdkTracerProvider;
import io.opentelemetry.sdk.trace.export.BatchSpanProcessor;
import io.opentelemetry.sdk.trace.export.SimpleSpanProcessor;
import io.opentelemetry.semconv.resource.attributes.ResourceAttributes;

public class OpenTelemetryUtil {
    public static void init() {
        Resource otelResource = Resource.getDefault().merge(
            Resource.create(
                Attributes.of(
                    ResourceAttributes.SERVICE_NAME, "<SERVICE_NAME>",
                    ResourceAttributes.HOST_NAME, "<SERVICE_NAME>"
                )
            )
        );

        SdkTracerProvider sdkTracerProvider = SdkTracerProvider.builder()
                .addSpanProcessor(SimpleSpanProcessor.create(LoggingSpanExporter.create()))
                .addSpanProcessor(BatchSpanProcessor.builder(
                    OtlpGrpcSpanExporter.builder()
                        .setEndpoint("ingest.[REGION].signoz.cloud:<PORT>/v1/traces")
                        .addHeader("signoz-ingestion-key", "<SIGNOZ_INGESTION_KEY>")
                        .build()).build()
                )
                .setResource(otelResource)
                .build();

        OpenTelemetry openTelemetry = OpenTelemetrySdk.builder()
                .setTracerProvider(sdkTracerProvider)
                .setPropagators(ContextPropagators.create(W3CTraceContextPropagator.getInstance()))
                .buildAndRegisterGlobal();

        tracer = openTelemetry.getTracer("android-tracer", "1.0.0");
    }

    private static Tracer tracer;

    public static Tracer getTracer() {
        return tracer;
    }
}

Replace <SERVICE_NAME> with the name of app, you will see this name in SigNoz Services section.

Ensure to replace <SIGNOZ_INGESTION_KEY>, <PORT>, and <REGION> with your actual SigNoz ingestion key, Port, and Region, respectively.

You can find your Ingestion Key in the following places:

  • mail which you recieved from SigNoz after signing up.
  • inside settings on SigNoz dashboard

Depending on the choice of your region for SigNoz cloud, the ingest endpoint will vary according to this table.

RegionEndpoint
USingest.us.signoz.cloud:443/v1/traces
INingest.in.signoz.cloud:443/v1/traces
EUingest.eu.signoz.cloud:443/v1/traces

These are the variables you need to replace :

PlaceholderDescription
<SIGNOZ_INGESTION_KEY>Your SigNoz ingestion key
<PORT>Port (default: 443)
<REGION>Region for SigNoz ingestion url

Inside MainActivity.java file, initialize the util

public class MainActivity extends AppCompatActivity {
	...
    @Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        // Add the following line to initialize OpenTelemetry. 
        OpenTelemetryUtil.init();
        ...
    }
    ...
}

Step 3: Send Telemetry data to SigNoz

Import these at top

import io.opentelemetry.api.common.AttributeKey;
import io.opentelemetry.api.common.Attributes;
import io.opentelemetry.api.trace.Span;
import io.opentelemetry.api.trace.StatusCode;
import io.opentelemetry.api.trace.Tracer;
import io.opentelemetry.context.Scope;

Use this to do the Manual Instrumentation

public void parentSpan() {
        Tracer tracer = OpenTelemetryUtil.getTracer();
        Span span = tracer.spanBuilder("Parent Span").startSpan();
        try (Scope scope = span.makeCurrent()) {
            System.out.println(span.getSpanContext().getTraceId());
            System.out.println(span.getSpanContext().getSpanId());
            childSpan();
        } finally {
            span.end();
        }
    }

    public void childSpan() {
        Tracer tracer = OpenTelemetryUtil.getTracer();
        Span span = tracer.spanBuilder("Child Span").startSpan();
        try (Scope scope = span.makeCurrent()) {
            System.out.println(span.getSpanContext().getTraceId());
            System.out.println(span.getSpanContext().getSpanId());
        } finally {
            span.end();
        }
    }

Call the above functions to add spans.

Step 4: Run app

Run your application from Android Studio to see the output & you can verify the sent span in SigNoz .

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