Python OTEL Example

┌─────────────┐                     ┌─────────────┐
│             │      HTTP 1.1       │             │
│   Client    │───────/hello───────▶│   Webapp    │
│             │                     │             │
└─────────────┘                     └─────────────┘

This Python applications utilizes tracing with a minimal reliance on external libraries, emphasizing core functionality without the need for web frameworks or non-standard library resources, demonstrating how to instrument an application from scratch (OTEL). It also includes Kubernetes manifests for easy deployment.

Test your OLTP collector by simply using kubectl apply with your clusters.

OTEL Services implemented

• Tracing
• [-] Metrics
• [-] Logs

Versions

• Python 3.8
• OTEL Collector 0.95.0

Usage

Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure that you have the following:

• A Kubernetes cluster up and running
• kubectl command-line tool installed and configured to connect to your cluster
• curl command-line tool installed

Step 1: Set the OpenTelemetry Endpoint

The first step is to set the environment variable OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT to specify the endpoint where the traces will be sent. In this example, we'll set it to http://observe-traces.observe.svc.cluster.local:4317.

export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT="http://observe-traces.observe.svc.cluster.local:4317"

Step 2: Deploy Client Component

Next, we'll deploy the client component of the Python application. The Kubernetes manifest file for the client component is hosted on GitHub in the p404/python-otel-example repository.

curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/p404/python-otel-example/main/.kustomize/client.yaml | envsubst | kubectl apply -f -

This command does the following:

1. It downloads the client.yaml manifest file using curl.
2. The envsubst command substitutes the OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT environment variable in the manifest file.
3. The resulting manifest is then applied to the Kubernetes cluster using kubectl apply -f -.

Step 3: Deploy Webapp Component

Similar to the client component, we'll deploy the webapp component of the Python application. The Kubernetes manifest file for the webapp component is also hosted on GitHub in the same repository.

curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/p404/python-otel-example/main/.kustomize/webapp.yaml | envsubst | kubectl apply -f -

This command follows the same steps as the previous one, but it downloads and applies the webapp.yaml manifest file.

One-Liner

export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT="http://observe-traces.observe.svc.cluster.local:4317" && \
curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/p404/python-otel-example/main/.kustomize/client.yaml | envsubst | kubectl apply -f - && \
curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/p404/python-otel-example/main/.kustomize/webapp.yaml | envsubst | kubectl apply -f -