Android App in Kotlin Instrumentation

This documentation contains instructions on how to set up OpenTelemetry(OTel) instrumentation in your Android mobile application built using Kotlin. OpenTelemetry, also known as OTel for short, is an open-source observability framework that can help you generate and collect telemetry data - traces, metrics, and logs from your Kotlin application.

Once the telemetry data is generated, you can configure an exporter to send the data to SigNoz for monitoring and visualization.

There are three major steps to using OpenTelemetry:

  • Instrumenting your android application with OpenTelemetry
  • Configuring the exporter to send data to SigNoz
  • Validating the configuration to ensure that data is being sent as expected.

In this tutorial, we will instrument a Kotlin Mobile application (Android) for traces and send it to SigNoz.

Requirements

Kotlin

Send traces directly to SigNoz cloud

Info

You can test sample application for Kotlin

Step 1 : Instrument your application with OpenTelemetry

To configure your Kotlin application to send traces to OpenTelemetry you need to add the following dependencies to the build.gradle file of a module or project

For that, paste the following inside build.gradle of your project.

implementation platform('io.opentelemetry:opentelemetry-bom:1.25.0')
implementation "io.opentelemetry:opentelemetry-api"
implementation "io.opentelemetry:opentelemetry-context"
implementation 'io.opentelemetry:opentelemetry-exporter-otlp'
implementation 'io.opentelemetry:opentelemetry-exporter-logging'
implementation 'io.opentelemetry:opentelemetry-extension-kotlin'
implementation 'io.opentelemetry:opentelemetry-sdk'
implementation 'io.opentelemetry:opentelemetry-semconv'

Step 2: Configure network settings

Create a file named network_security_config.xml in the app/res/xml directory and add the following content to the file

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<network-security-config>
    <domain-config cleartextTrafficPermitted="true">
        <domain includeSubdomains="true">ingest.[REGION].signoz.cloud</domain>
    </domain-config>
</network-security-config>

Add the following content to the app/src/main/AndroidManifest.xml file to allow the application to access the network

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<manifest ...>
  <!-- Add the following line to grant network access permissions. -->
  <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET" />

  <application
    ...
    <!-- Add the following line to configure the network for the domain name to which you want to report data. -->
    android:networkSecurityConfig="@xml/network_security_config"
    ...>

    ...
  </application>

</manifest>

Create a file named OpentelemetryUtil.kt with the following content

package com.example.androidkotlindemo

import io.opentelemetry.api.OpenTelemetry
import io.opentelemetry.api.common.Attributes
import io.opentelemetry.api.trace.Tracer
import io.opentelemetry.api.trace.propagation.W3CTraceContextPropagator
import io.opentelemetry.context.propagation.ContextPropagators
import io.opentelemetry.exporter.logging.LoggingSpanExporter
import io.opentelemetry.exporter.otlp.trace.OtlpGrpcSpanExporter
import io.opentelemetry.sdk.OpenTelemetrySdk
import io.opentelemetry.sdk.resources.Resource
import io.opentelemetry.sdk.trace.SdkTracerProvider
import io.opentelemetry.sdk.trace.export.BatchSpanProcessor
import io.opentelemetry.sdk.trace.export.SimpleSpanProcessor
import io.opentelemetry.semconv.resource.attributes.ResourceAttributes

class OpenTelemetryUtil {
    companion object {
        @JvmStatic
        fun init() {
            val otelResource = Resource.getDefault().merge(
                Resource.create(
                    Attributes.of(
                        ResourceAttributes.SERVICE_NAME, "anukul-kotlin-test",
                        ResourceAttributes.HOST_NAME, "anukul-kotlin-test"
                    )
                )
            )

            val sdkTracerProvider = SdkTracerProvider.builder()
                .addSpanProcessor(SimpleSpanProcessor.create(LoggingSpanExporter.create()))
                .addSpanProcessor(
                    BatchSpanProcessor.builder(
                        OtlpGrpcSpanExporter.builder()
                            .setEndpoint("ingest.[REGION].signoz.cloud:<PORT>/v1/traces")
                            .addHeader("signoz-access-token", "<SIGNOZ_INGESTION_KEY>")
                            .build()
                    ).build()
                )
                .setResource(otelResource)
                .build()

            val openTelemetry: OpenTelemetry = OpenTelemetrySdk.builder()
                .setTracerProvider(sdkTracerProvider)
                .setPropagators(ContextPropagators.create(W3CTraceContextPropagator.getInstance()))
                .buildAndRegisterGlobal()

            tracer = openTelemetry.getTracer("android-tracer", "1.0.0")
        }

        private var tracer: Tracer? = null

        @JvmStatic
        fun getTracer(): Tracer? {
            return tracer
        }
    }

}

Replace <SERVICE_NAME> with the name of app, you will see this name in SigNoz Services section.

Ensure to replace <SIGNOZ_INGESTION_KEY>, <PORT>, and <REGION> with your actual SigNoz ingestion key, Port, and region, respectively.

You can find your Ingestion Key in the following places:

  • mail which you recieved from SigNoz after signing up.
  • inside settings on SigNoz dashboard

Depending on the choice of your region for SigNoz cloud, the ingest endpoint will vary according to this table.

RegionEndpoint
USingest.us.signoz.cloud:443/v1/traces
INingest.in.signoz.cloud:443/v1/traces
EUingest.eu.signoz.cloud:443/v1/traces

These are the variables you need to replace :

PlaceholderDescription
<SIGNOZ_INGESTION_KEY>Your SigNoz ingestion key
<PORT>Port (default: 443)
<REGION>Region for SigNoz ingestion

Inside MainActivity.kt file, initialize the util

class MainActivity : AppCompatActivity() {

    ...
    override fun onCreate(savedInstanceState: Bundle?) {
        WindowCompat.setDecorFitsSystemWindows(window, false)
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState)
        // Add the following line to initialize OpenTelemetry. 
        OpenTelemetryUtil.init()

            ...
    }
}

Step 3: Send Telemetry data to SigNoz

Import these at top

import io.opentelemetry.api.common.AttributeKey;
import io.opentelemetry.api.common.Attributes;
import io.opentelemetry.api.trace.Span;
import io.opentelemetry.api.trace.StatusCode;
import io.opentelemetry.api.trace.Tracer;
import io.opentelemetry.context.Scope;

Use this function to create span


fun parentSpan() {
        val tracer: Tracer = OpenTelemetryUtil.getTracer()!!
        val span = tracer.spanBuilder("Parent Span").startSpan()
        try {
            span.makeCurrent().use { scope ->
                println(span.spanContext.traceId)
                println(span.spanContext.spanId)
                childSpan()
            }
        } finally {
            span.end()
        }
    }


fun childSpan() {
        val tracer: Tracer = OpenTelemetryUtil.getTracer()!!
        val span = tracer.spanBuilder("Child Span").startSpan()
        try {
            span.makeCurrent().use { scope ->
                println(span.spanContext.traceId)
                println(span.spanContext.spanId)
            }
        } finally {
            span.end()
        }
    }

Step 4: Run app

Run your application from Android Studio to see the output & you can verify the sent span in SigNoz .

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