iOS app in SwiftUI instrumentation

Overview

This document contains instructions on how to set up OpenTelemetry instrumentation in your iOS applications built using Swift and view your application traces in SigNoz.

Prerequisites

A SwiftUI-based iOS application in Xcode.
Swift toolchain installed; see Swift getting started.
Access to a SigNoz Cloud account or self-hosted SigNoz instance.

Send traces to SigNoz

📝 Note

You can test the sample app for SwiftUI.

Step 1: Add OpenTelemetry dependencies

Install opentelemetry-swift and grpc-swift in Package.swift.

Package.swift

dependencies: [
      .package(url: "https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-swift.git", .upToNextMajor(from: "1.9.1")),
      .package(url: "https://github.com/grpc/grpc-swift", from: "1.15.0"),
  ],
  targets: [
      .executableTarget(
          name: "<service_name>",
          dependencies: [
              .product(name: "OpenTelemetryApi", package: "opentelemetry-swift"),
              .product(name: "OpenTelemetrySdk", package: "opentelemetry-swift"),
              .product(name: "StdoutExporter", package: "opentelemetry-swift"),
              .product(name: "ResourceExtension", package: "opentelemetry-swift"),
              .product(name: "ZipkinExporter", package: "opentelemetry-swift"),
              .product(name: "OpenTelemetryProtocolExporter", package: "opentelemetry-swift"),
              .product(name: "SignPostIntegration", package: "opentelemetry-swift"),
              .product(name: "GRPC", package: "grpc-swift")
          ],
          path: "."
      )
  ]

<service_name> is the name of your service.

Step 2: Initialize the tracer

Create OpentelemetrySetup.swift and configure the exporter.

OpentelemetrySetup.swift

// OpenTelemetrySetup.swift
import Foundation
import GRPC
import NIO
import NIOSSL
import OpenTelemetryApi
import OpenTelemetryProtocolExporterCommon
import OpenTelemetryProtocolExporterGrpc
import OpenTelemetrySdk
import ResourceExtension
import StdoutExporter

struct OpenTelemetrySetup {
    static func configureOpenTelemetry() {
        let resource = DefaultResources().get().merging(other: Resource(attributes: [
            "service.name": AttributeValue.string("<service_name>"), 
        ]))
        
        let otlpConfiguration: OtlpConfiguration = OtlpConfiguration(timeout: TimeInterval(10), headers: [("signoz-ingestion-key", "<your-ingestion-key>")])
        
        let grpcChannel = ClientConnection.usingPlatformAppropriateTLS(for: MultiThreadedEventLoopGroup(numberOfThreads: 1)).connect(host: "ingest.<region>.signoz.cloud", port: 443)
        
        let otlpTraceExporter = OtlpTraceExporter(channel: grpcChannel, config: otlpConfiguration)
        let stdoutExporter = StdoutExporter()
        
        let spanExporter = MultiSpanExporter(spanExporters: [otlpTraceExporter, stdoutExporter])
        
        let spanProcessor = SimpleSpanProcessor(spanExporter: spanExporter)
        
        OpenTelemetry.registerTracerProvider(tracerProvider:
            TracerProviderBuilder()
                .add(spanProcessor: spanProcessor)
                .with(resource: resource)
                .build()
        )
    }
}

Replace the placeholders:

<service_name>: logical name of your iOS service; this is what you will see in SigNoz.
<your-ingestion-key>: ingestion key for your SigNoz Cloud organization.
<region>: your SigNoz Cloud region, for example us, eu, or in.

✅ Info

Using self-hosted SigNoz? Most steps are identical. Update the endpoint and remove the ingestion key header as shown in Cloud → Self-Hosted.

Once you replace the content of the file, you need to add init in the <project_name>.swift file

init() {
        OpenTelemetrySetup.configureOpenTelemetry()
    }

Step 3: Send telemetry data to SigNoz

To send telemetry data to SigNoz, you can create a function to add spans and data. But prior to that you need to import OpenTelemetryApi & create instance of tracer, using the following snippet

ContentView.swift

import OpenTelemetryApi // Import OpenTelemetryApi for the tracer

//this should be inside ContentView Struct
let tracer = OpenTelemetry.instance.tracerProvider.get(instrumentationName: "SwiftExample", instrumentationVersion: "semver:0.1.0")

// Function to simulate work and create a span
    func doWork() {
        let sampleKey = "sampleKey"
        let sampleValue = "sampleValue"
        
        // Start a new span named "doWork"
        let childSpan = tracer.spanBuilder(spanName: "doWork")
            .setSpanKind(spanKind: .client)
            .startSpan()
        
        // Set an attribute on the span
        childSpan.setAttribute(key: sampleKey, value: sampleValue)
        
        // Simulate some work by sleeping for a random interval
        Thread.sleep(forTimeInterval: Double.random(in: 0 ..< 10) / 100)
        
        // End the span
        childSpan.end()
    }

Step 4: Run the app

Run your application from Xcode.

Validate

In SigNoz, go to Traces Explorer and confirm that the traces for your service (for example <service_name>) are present.
Open a recent trace and verify that spans from your iOS app are present with the attributes you set.

Troubleshooting

If you do not see your iOS service in SigNoz, confirm the endpoint/port is reachable from the simulator or device and that the ingestion key (for Cloud) is correct.

Next steps

Explore your mobile traces in the Trace Explorer.
Create latency and error alerts for your service using Alert Management.

iOS app in SwiftUI instrumentation

Overview

Prerequisites

Send traces to SigNoz

Step 1: Add OpenTelemetry dependencies

Step 2: Initialize the tracer

Step 3: Send telemetry data to SigNoz

Step 4: Run the app

Validate

Troubleshooting

Next steps

Was this page helpful?