Customize OpenTelemetry spans as a developer

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The OpenTelemetry plugin is built on top of the Kong Gateway tracing PDK.

It’s possible to customize the spans and add your own spans through the universal tracing PDK.

Create a custom span

The following is an example for adding a custom span using Kong Gateway’s serverless plugin:

1. Create a file named custom-span.lua with the following content:

      -- Modify the root span
      local root_span = kong.tracing.active_span()
      root_span:set_attribute("custom.attribute", "custom value")
   
      -- Create a custom span
      local span = kong.tracing.start_span("custom-span")
   
      -- Append attributes
      span:set_attribute("custom.attribute", "custom value")
         
      -- Close the span
      span:finish()
   

2. Apply the Lua code using the post-function plugin using a cURL file upload:

    curl -i -X POST http://localhost:8001/plugins \
      -F "name=post-function" \
      -F "config.access[1]=@custom-span.lua"
   
    HTTP/1.1 201 Created
    ...
   

More information

• Troubleshooting the OpenTelemetry plugin
• How logging works in the OpenTelemetry plugin
• How tracing works in the OpenTelemetry plugin