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Alex Spinov
Alex Spinov

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OpenTelemetry Has a Free Instrumentation API That Works Everywhere

#opentelemetry #observability #monitoring #devops

OpenTelemetry provides a vendor-neutral API for traces, metrics, and logs. Instrument once, export to any backend — Jaeger, Prometheus, Datadog, Grafana, or your own.

Auto-Instrumentation (Zero Code Changes) 

npm install @opentelemetry/sdk-node @opentelemetry/auto-instrumentations-node
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const { NodeSDK } = require('@opentelemetry/sdk-node');
const { getNodeAutoInstrumentations } = require('@opentelemetry/auto-instrumentations-node');
const { OTLPTraceExporter } = require('@opentelemetry/exporter-trace-otlp-http');

const sdk = new NodeSDK({
  traceExporter: new OTLPTraceExporter({
    url: 'http://localhost:4318/v1/traces'
  }),
  instrumentations: [getNodeAutoInstrumentations()]
});

sdk.start();
// Now ALL HTTP requests, DB queries, and framework calls are traced automatically
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Manual Instrumentation 

const { trace } = require('@opentelemetry/api');

const tracer = trace.getTracer('my-service');

async function processOrder(orderId) {
  return tracer.startActiveSpan('process-order', async (span) => {
    span.setAttribute('order.id', orderId);

    try {
      const items = await tracer.startActiveSpan('fetch-items', async (childSpan) => {
        const result = await db.query('SELECT * FROM items WHERE order_id = ?', [orderId]);
        childSpan.setAttribute('items.count', result.length);
        childSpan.end();
        return result;
      });

      await tracer.startActiveSpan('charge-payment', async (childSpan) => {
        await paymentService.charge(orderId, items);
        childSpan.end();
      });

      span.setStatus({ code: 1 }); // OK
    } catch (err) {
      span.setStatus({ code: 2, message: err.message });
      span.recordException(err);
      throw err;
    } finally {
      span.end();
    }
  });
}
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Metrics API 

const { metrics } = require('@opentelemetry/api');

const meter = metrics.getMeter('my-service');
const requestCounter = meter.createCounter('http.requests', {
  description: 'Total HTTP requests'
});
const responseTime = meter.createHistogram('http.response_time', {
  description: 'Response time in ms', unit: 'ms'
});

app.use((req, res, next) => {
  const start = Date.now();
  res.on('finish', () => {
    requestCounter.add(1, { method: req.method, status: res.statusCode });
    responseTime.record(Date.now() - start, { method: req.method });
  });
  next();
});
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Why This Matters

  • Vendor-neutral: Switch backends without code changes
  • Auto-instrumentation: Traces for free with zero code
  • Full stack: Traces + metrics + logs in one SDK
  • Industry standard: CNCF graduated project, supported everywhere

Need custom observability tooling or monitoring automation? I build developer tools and data pipelines. Check out my web scraping actors on Apify or reach out at spinov001@gmail.com for custom solutions.

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