PHP Opentelemetry Instrumentation

This doc contains instructions about how to set up OpenTelemetry(OTel) instrumentation in your PHP application. 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 PHP 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 PHP application with OpenTelemetry
• Configuring the exporter to send data to SigNoz
• Validating that configuration to ensure that data is being sent as expected.

In this documentation, we will instrument a PHP application for traces and send it to SigNoz.

Requirements

• PHP 8.0+
• PECL
• Composer

Send traces to SigNoz Cloud

Based on your application environment, you can choose the setup below to send traces to SigNoz Cloud.

sudo apt-get install gcc make autoconf

pecl install opentelemetry               
pecl install protobuf

[opentelemetry]
extension=opentelemetry.so

php -m | grep opentelemetry

opentelemetry

composer config allow-plugins.php-http/discovery false
composer require \
  open-telemetry/sdk \
  open-telemetry/exporter-otlp \
  php-http/guzzle7-adapter \
  open-telemetry/opentelemetry-auto-slim

env OTEL_PHP_AUTOLOAD_ENABLED=true \
    OTEL_SERVICE_NAME=<SERVICE_NAME> \
    OTEL_TRACES_EXPORTER=otlp \
    OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_PROTOCOL=http/protobuf \
    OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=<SIGNOZ_ENDPOINT> \
    OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_HEADERS=signoz-ingestion-key=<INGESTION_KEY> \
    OTEL_PROPAGATORS=baggage,tracecontext \
    php -S localhost:8080 app.php

sudo apt-get install gcc make autoconf

pecl install opentelemetry
pecl install protobuf

[opentelemetry]
extension=opentelemetry.so

php -m | grep opentelemetry

opentelemetry

composer config allow-plugins.php-http/discovery false
composer require \
  open-telemetry/sdk \
  open-telemetry/exporter-otlp \
  php-http/guzzle7-adapter \
  open-telemetry/opentelemetry-auto-slim

env OTEL_PHP_AUTOLOAD_ENABLED=true \
    OTEL_SERVICE_NAME=<SERVICE_NAME> \
    OTEL_TRACES_EXPORTER=otlp \
    OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_PROTOCOL=http/protobuf \
    OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=<COLLECTOR_ENDPOINT> \
    OTEL_PROPAGATORS=baggage,tracecontext \
    php -S localhost:8080 app.php

Send Traces to Self-Hosted SigNoz

Step 1: Setup Development Environment

To configure our PHP application to send data, you need to use OpenTelemetry PHP extension. Since the extension is built from the source, you need to have the build tools, which can be installed using the following command:

sudo apt-get install gcc make autoconf

Step 2: Build the extension

With our environment set up we can install the extension using PECL:

pecl install opentelemetry
pecl install protobuf

After successfully installing the OpenTelemetry extension, add the extension to php.ini file of your project:

[opentelemetry]
extension=opentelemetry.so

Verify that the extension is enabled by running:

php -m | grep opentelemetry

This should output:

opentelemetry

Step 3: Add the dependencies

Add dependencies required for OpenTelemetry SDK for PHP to perform automatic instrumentation using this command :

composer config allow-plugins.php-http/discovery false
composer require \
  open-telemetry/sdk \
  open-telemetry/opentelemetry-auto-slim \
  php-http/guzzle7-adapter \
  open-telemetry/exporter-otlp

Step 4: Set environment variables and run app

We are passing the environment variables on run time and this way we don't have to change anything in code. Run your application using:

env OTEL_PHP_AUTOLOAD_ENABLED=true \
    OTEL_SERVICE_NAME=<SERVICE_NAME> \
    OTEL_TRACES_EXPORTER=otlp \
    OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_PROTOCOL=http/protobuf \
    OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=<SIGNOZ_ENDPOINT> \
    OTEL_PROPAGATORS=baggage,tracecontext \
    php -S localhost:8080 app.php

You can change the env vars value by referencing values from the following lookup table

Sample PHP Application

We have included a sample PHP application at Sample PHP App Github Repo,

Tutorial

Here's a tutorial with step by step guide on how to install SigNoz and start monitoring a sample PHP app.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. How to find what to use in IP of SigNoz if I have installed SigNoz in Kubernetes cluster?

   Based on where you have installed your application and where you have installed SigNoz, you need to find the right value for this. Please use this grid to find the value you should use for IP of SigNoz

2. I am sending data from my application to SigNoz, but I don't see any events or graphs in the SigNoz dashboard. What should I do?

   This could be because of one of the following reasons:

   1. Your application is generating telemetry data, but not able to connect with SigNoz installation

      Please use this troubleshooting guide to find if your application is able to access SigNoz installation and send data to it.

   2. Your application is not actually generating telemetry data

      Please check if the application is generating telemetry data first. You can use Console Exporter to just print your telemetry data in console first. Join our Slack Community if you need help on how to export your telemetry data in console

   3. Your SigNoz installation is not running or behind a firewall

      Please double check if the pods in SigNoz installation are running fine. docker ps or kubectl get pods -n platform are your friends for this.

What Cloud Endpoint Should I Use?

The primary method for sending data to SigNoz Cloud is through OTLP exporters. You can either send the data directly from your application using the exporters available in SDKs/language agents or send the data to a collector agent, which batches/enriches telemetry and sends it to the Cloud.

My Collector Sends Data to SigNoz Cloud

Using gRPC Exporter

The endpoint should be ingest.{region}.signoz.cloud:443, where {region} should be replaced with in, us, or eu. Note that the exporter endpoint doesn't require a scheme for the gRPC exporter in the collector.

# Sample config with `us` region
exporters:
    otlp:
        endpoint: "ingest.us.signoz.cloud:443"
        tls:
            insecure: false
        headers:
            "signoz-ingestion-key": "<SIGNOZ_INGESTION_KEY>"

Using HTTP Exporter

The endpoint should be https://ingest.{region}.signoz.cloud:443, where {region} should be replaced with in, us, or eu. Note that the endpoint includes the scheme https for the HTTP exporter in the collector.

# Sample config with `us` region
exporters:
    otlphttp:
        endpoint: "https://ingest.us.signoz.cloud:443"
        tls:
            insecure: false
        headers:
            "signoz-ingestion-key": "<SIGNOZ_INGESTION_KEY>"

My Application Sends Data to SigNoz Cloud

The endpoint should be configured either with environment variables or in the SDK setup code.

Using Environment Variables

Using gRPC Exporter

Examples with us region

• OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_PROTOCOL=grpc OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=https://ingest.us.signoz.cloud:443 OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_HEADERS=signoz-ingestion-key=<SIGNOZ_INGESTION_KEY>

Using HTTP Exporter

• OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_PROTOCOL=http/protobuf OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=https://ingest.us.signoz.cloud:443 OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_HEADERS=signoz-ingestion-key=<SIGNOZ_INGESTION_KEY>

Configuring Endpoint in Code

Please refer to the agent documentation.

Sending Data from a Third-Party Service

The endpoint configuration here depends on the export protocol supported by the third-party service. They may support either gRPC, HTTP, or both. Generally, you will need to adjust the host and port. The host address should be ingest.{region}.signoz.cloud:443, where {region} should be replaced with in, us, or eu, and port 443 should be used.