Manually extracting OpenTelemetry context from golang into a string? - go

Question

I'm building a simple client server app which I want to trace across the client execution to a server microservice that calls a second server microservice.
Simply speaking, it's not more complicated than CLI -> ServiceA -> ServiceB.
The challenge I'm having is how to serialize the context - most of the docs I've looked at appear to do some form of automated HTTP header injection (e.g. https://opentelemetry.lightstep.com/core-concepts/context-propagation/) , but I do not have access to that. I need to serialize (I think) the context of the trace/span in the client and push it to the server, where I'll rehydrate it. (Mind you, I'd love this to be simpler, but I cannot figure it out).
So the object looks like this (called "job"):
args := &types.SubmitArgs{
SerializedOtelContext: serializedOtelContext,
}
job := &types.Job{}
tracer := otel.GetTracerProvider().Tracer("myservice.org")
_, span := tracer.Start(ctx, "Submitting Job to RPC")
err := system.JsonRpcMethod(rpcHost, rpcPort, "Submit", args, job)
The function to submit to JsonRpcMethod is here:
func JsonRpcMethod(
host string,
port int,
method string,
req, res interface{},
) error {
client, err := rpc.DialHTTP("tcp", fmt.Sprintf("%s:%d", host, port))
if err != nil {
return fmt.Errorf("Error in dialing. %s", err)
}
return client.Call(fmt.Sprintf("JobServer.%s", method), req, res)
}
And the function that receives it is here:
func (server *JobServer) Submit(args *types.SubmitArgs, reply *types.Job) error {
//nolint
job, err := server.RequesterNode.Scheduler.SubmitJob(args.Spec, args.Deal)
if err != nil {
return err
}
*reply = *job
return nil
}
My question is how do I, in the receiving function ("Submit" above) extract the trace/span from the sender?

Answer 1

Here is a small program to illustrate the usage. Hope this makes it clear.
package main
import (
"context"
"fmt"
"go.opentelemetry.io/otel/exporters/stdout/stdouttrace"
"go.opentelemetry.io/otel/propagation"
sdktrace "go.opentelemetry.io/otel/sdk/trace"
)
func main() {
// common init
// You may also want to set them as globals
exp, _ := stdouttrace.New(stdouttrace.WithPrettyPrint())
bsp := sdktrace.NewSimpleSpanProcessor(exp) // You should use batch span processor in prod
tp := sdktrace.NewTracerProvider(
sdktrace.WithSampler(sdktrace.AlwaysSample()),
sdktrace.WithSpanProcessor(bsp),
)
propgator := propagation.NewCompositeTextMapPropagator(propagation.TraceContext{}, propagation.Baggage{})
ctx, span := tp.Tracer("foo").Start(context.Background(), "parent-span-name")
defer span.End()
// Serialize the context into carrier
carrier := propagation.MapCarrier{}
propgator.Inject(ctx, carrier)
// This carrier is sent accros the process
fmt.Println(carrier)
// Extract the context and start new span as child
// In your receiving function
parentCtx := propgator.Extract(context.Background(), carrier)
_, childSpan := tp.Tracer("foo").Start(parentCtx, "child-span-name")
childSpan.AddEvent("some-dummy-event")
childSpan.End()
}