X-Ray tracing from SQS to Lambda

SQS supports X-Ray tracing but it does not propagate the trace to Lambda function. Lambda always starts a new trace with an immutable facade segment.

This is a known issue, see:

• aws-xray-sdk-node: https://github.com/aws/aws-xray-sdk-node/issues/208
• aws-xray-sdk-dotnet: https://github.com/aws/aws-xray-sdk-dotnet/issues/110

Workaround

There were some workaround discussions in the above issues.

The following is a solution I implemented for a demo:

• Create a new segment to replace the facade segment created by Lambda, and
• assign with the retrieved trace ID and parent ID from the trace header of the SQS segment.

Example in typescript:

import { Handler, SQSEvent, SQSRecord } from "aws-lambda"
import { Segment, setSegment, utils } from "aws-xray-sdk"
...

// Create a new Segment
const traceHeaderStr = sqsRecord.attributes.AWSTraceHeader
const traceData = utils.processTraceData(traceHeaderStr)
const sqsSegmentEndTime = Number(sqsRecord.attributes.ApproximateFirstReceiveTimestamp) / 1000

const lambdaSegment = new Segment(
    functionName,
    traceData.root,
    traceData.parent
)
lambdaSegment.origin = "AWS::Lambda::Function"
lambdaSegment.start_time = lambdaExecStartTime - (lambdaExecStartTime - sqsSegmentEndTime)
lambdaSegment.addPluginData({
    function_arn: functionArn,
    region: sqsRecord.awsRegion,
    request_id: awsRequestId
})

// Set it as the current Segment
setSegment(lambdaSegment)

// Do something

// Close the segment
lambdaSegment.close()

From Trace Map console:

Example code can be found here on GitHub kyhau/aws-tools/b/X-Ray/xray-sqs-to-lambda/handler.ts.

Comments

[alexey2baranov]

hope this work. i will try to use tomorrow.
btw: why don't you use new Date() for Lambda start Time. You can make it optional at least