tracing-to-zipkin

Run it locally

1. Clone the example repository: git clone https://github.com/opencensus-otherwork/opencensus-quickstarts
2. Change to the example directory: cd opencensus-quickstarts/go/tracing-to-zipkin
3. Install dependencies: go get go.opencensus.io/* && go get go.opencensus.io/exporter/zipkin
4. Download Zipkin: curl -sSL https://zipkin.io/quickstart.sh | bash -s
5. Start Zipkin: java -jar zipkin.jar
6. Run the code: go run tracingtozipkin.go
7. Navigate to Zipkin Web UI: http://localhost:9411
8. Click Find Traces, and you should see a trace.
9. Click into that, and you should see the details.

How does it work?

func main() {
	// 1. Configure exporter to export traces to Zipkin.
	localEndpoint, err := openzipkin.NewEndpoint("go-quickstart", "192.168.1.5:5454")
	if err != nil {
		log.Fatalf("Failed to create the local zipkinEndpoint: %v", err)
	}
	reporter := zipkinHTTP.NewReporter("http://localhost:9411/api/v2/spans")
	ze := zipkin.NewExporter(reporter, localEndpoint)
	trace.RegisterExporter(ze)

	// 2. Configure 100% sample rate, otherwise, few traces will be sampled.
	trace.ApplyConfig(trace.Config{DefaultSampler: trace.AlwaysSample()})

	// 3. Create a span with the background context, making this the parent span.
	// A span must be closed.
	ctx, span := trace.StartSpan(context.Background(), "main")
	// 5b. Make the span close at the end of this function.
	defer span.End()

	for i := 0; i < 10; i++ {
		doWork(ctx)
	}
}

Configure Exporter

OpenCensus can export traces to different distributed tracing stores (such as Zipkin, Jeager, Stackdriver Trace). In (1), we configure OpenCensus to export to Zipkin, which is listening on localhost port 9411, and all of the traces from this program will be associated with a service name go-quickstart.

// 1. Configure exporter to export traces to Zipkin.
localEndpoint, err := openzipkin.NewEndpoint("go-quickstart", "192.168.1.5:5454")
if err != nil {
  log.Fatalf("Failed to create the local zipkinEndpoint: %v", err)
}
reporter := zipkinHTTP.NewReporter("http://localhost:9411/api/v2/spans")
ze := zipkin.NewExporter(reporter, localEndpoint)
trace.RegisterExporter(ze)

Configure Sampler

Configure 100% sample rate, otherwise, few traces will be sampled.

// 2. Configure 100% sample rate, otherwise, few traces will be sampled.
trace.ApplyConfig(trace.Config{DefaultSampler: trace.AlwaysSample()})

Create a span

To create a span in a trace, we used the Tracer to start a new span (3). We denote this as the parent span because we pass context.Background(). We must also be sure to close this span, which we will explore later in this guide.

// 3. Create a span with the background context, making this the parent span.
// A span must be closed.
ctx, span := trace.StartSpan(context.Background(), "main")

Create a child span

The main method calls doWork a number of times. Each invocation also generates a child span. Take a look at the doWork method.

func doWork(ctx context.Context) {
	// 4. Start a child span. This will be a child span because we've passed
	// the parent span's ctx.
	_, span := trace.StartSpan(ctx, "doWork")
	// 5a. Make the span close at the end of this function.
	defer span.End()

	fmt.Println("doing busy work")
	time.Sleep(80 * time.Millisecond)
	buf := bytes.NewBuffer([]byte{0xFF, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00})
	num, err := binary.ReadVarint(buf)
	if err != nil {
		// 6. Set status upon error
		span.SetStatus(trace.Status{
			Code:    trace.StatusCodeUnknown,
			Message: err.Error(),
		})
	}

	// 7. Annotate our span to capture metadata about our operation
	span.Annotate([]trace.Attribute{
		trace.Int64Attribute("bytes to int", num),
	}, "Invoking doWork")
	time.Sleep(20 * time.Millisecond)
}

End the spans

We must end the spans so they becomes available for exporting.

// 5a. Make the span close at the end of this function.
defer span.End()

// 5b. Make the span close at the end of this function.
defer span.End()

Set the Status of the span

We can set the status of our span to create more observability of our traced operations.

// 6. Set status upon error
span.SetStatus(trace.Status{
	Code:    trace.StatusCodeUnknown,
	Message: err.Error(),
})

Create an Annotation

An annotation tells a descriptive story in text of an event that occurred during a span’s lifetime.

// 7. Annotate our span to capture metadata about our operation
span.Annotate([]trace.Attribute{
	trace.Int64Attribute("bytes to int", num),
}, "Invoking doWork")