Requests Module

The SDK should auto-instrument all outgoing HTTP requests, regardless of the library that issues the requests. Each outgoing request should result in a span. The Requests module is technology agnostic, it only cares about span data properties.

AttributeDescriptionNotes
opAlways "http.client"Required
descriptionA string including the HTTP request method, and the full URL. e.g., "GET https://example.com/data.json?filter=all"Required 1
dataA key-value mapping of span attributes. (e.g., {"http.query": "filter=all", "server.address": "prod-2.example.com"})Required for full experience. See Span Data for details

None of the span data fields are hard requirements, but attaching as many of them as possible is a more future-proof approach. We recommend that the SDK adds every attribute listed in the HTTP Span Data Conventions. The minimal requirements are:

  • server.address must be set to allow correct domain grouping for descriptions containing relative URLs. e.g., the description "GET /data.json" is missing a domain. In this case, server.address must be set. If the span description contains the full URL, span.server can be omitted
  • http.response.status_code must be set to enable response code breakdowns

Consider a website called "App Ex", running on app.example.com. This JavaScript code that issues an HTTP request from the browser:

Copied
fetch("/data.json?user=1");

Should result in the following span, assuming the request was successful:

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{
  "description": "GET /data.json?user=1",
  "op": "http.client",
  "data": {
    "http.query": "user=1",
    "http.request_method": "GET",
    "http.response.status_code": 200,
    "http.fragment": "",
    "server.address": "app.example.com",
    "server.port": 8080,
    ... other span properties
  }
}

  1. The HTTP method must be one of the known HTTP request methods ↩

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