React JS OpenTelemetry Instrumentation

This document contains instructions on how to set up OpenTelemetry instrumentation in your React JS applications and view your application traces in SigNoz.

Send traces to SigNoz Cloud

Based on your application environment, you can choose the setup below to send traces to SigNoz Cloud.

From VMs, there are two ways to send data to SigNoz Cloud.

Send traces directly to SigNoz Cloud
Send traces via OTel Collector binary (recommended)

Send traces directly to SigNoz Cloud - Code Level Automatic Instrumentation

Step 1. Install OpenTelemetry packages

npm install --save @opentelemetry/context-zone
npm install --save @opentelemetry/instrumentation
npm install --save @opentelemetry/auto-instrumentations-web
npm install --save @opentelemetry/sdk-trace-base
npm install --save @opentelemetry/sdk-trace-web
npm install --save @opentelemetry/resources
npm install --save @opentelemetry/semantic-conventions
npm install --save @opentelemetry/exporter-trace-otlp-http

Step 2. Create tracing.js / tracing.ts file in src directory
You need to configure the endpoint for SigNoz cloud in this file. You can find your ingestion key from SigNoz cloud account details sent on your email.

tracing.ts

import {
    defaultResource,
    resourceFromAttributes,
  } from '@opentelemetry/resources';
  import { WebTracerProvider } from '@opentelemetry/sdk-trace-web';
  import { BatchSpanProcessor } from '@opentelemetry/sdk-trace-base';
  import { OTLPTraceExporter } from '@opentelemetry/exporter-trace-otlp-http';
  import { ZoneContextManager } from '@opentelemetry/context-zone';
  import { registerInstrumentations } from '@opentelemetry/instrumentation';
  import { getWebAutoInstrumentations } from '@opentelemetry/auto-instrumentations-web';
  
  // Define resource and service attributes
  const resource = defaultResource().merge(
    resourceFromAttributes({
      'service.name': '<service_name>',
      'service.version': '0.1.0',
    })
  );
  
  // Set up the OTLP trace exporter
  const exporter = new OTLPTraceExporter({
    url: 'https://ingest.<region>.signoz.cloud:443/v1/traces',
    headers: {
      'signoz-access-token': '<your-ingestion-key>',
    },
  });
  
  // Set up the span processor
  const processor = new BatchSpanProcessor(exporter);
  
  // Create and configure the WebTracerProvider
  const provider = new WebTracerProvider({
    resource: resource,
    spanProcessors: [processor], // Add the span processor here
  });
  
  // Register the tracer provider with the context manager
  provider.register({
    contextManager: new ZoneContextManager(),
  });
  
  // Set up automatic instrumentation for web APIs
  registerInstrumentations({
    instrumentations: [
      getWebAutoInstrumentations({
        '@opentelemetry/instrumentation-xml-http-request': {
          propagateTraceHeaderCorsUrls: [
            /.+/g, // Regex to match your backend URLs
          ],
        },
        '@opentelemetry/instrumentation-fetch': {
          propagateTraceHeaderCorsUrls: [
            /.+/g, // Regex to match your backend URLs
          ],
        },
      }),
    ],
  });

Set the <region> to match your SigNoz Cloud region
Replace <your-ingestion-key> with your SigNoz ingestion key
<service_name> is name of your service

Step 3. Import tracing.js / tracing.ts file in main.jsx

//main.tsx

import './tracing.ts';

Step 4. You can validate if your application is sending traces to SigNoz cloud here.

In case you encounter an issue where all applications do not get listed in the services section then please refer to the troubleshooting section.

Send traces via OTel Collector binary - Code Level Automatic Instrumentation

OTel Collector binary helps to collect logs, hostmetrics, resource and infra attributes. It is recommended to install Otel Collector binary to collect and send traces to SigNoz cloud. You can correlate signals and have rich contextual data through this way.

📝 Note

You can find instructions to install OTel Collector binary here in your VM. Once you are done setting up your OTel Collector binary, you can follow the below steps for instrumenting your React JS application.

Step 1. Install OpenTelemetry packages

npm install --save @opentelemetry/context-zone
npm install --save @opentelemetry/instrumentation
npm install --save @opentelemetry/auto-instrumentations-web
npm install --save @opentelemetry/sdk-trace-base
npm install --save @opentelemetry/sdk-trace-web
npm install --save @opentelemetry/resources
npm install --save @opentelemetry/semantic-conventions
npm install --save @opentelemetry/exporter-trace-otlp-http

Step 2. Create tracing.js / tracing.ts file

tracing.ts

import {
    defaultResource,
    resourceFromAttributes,
  } from '@opentelemetry/resources';
  import { WebTracerProvider } from '@opentelemetry/sdk-trace-web';
  import { BatchSpanProcessor } from '@opentelemetry/sdk-trace-base';
  import { OTLPTraceExporter } from '@opentelemetry/exporter-trace-otlp-http';
  import { ZoneContextManager } from '@opentelemetry/context-zone';
  import { registerInstrumentations } from '@opentelemetry/instrumentation';
  import { getWebAutoInstrumentations } from '@opentelemetry/auto-instrumentations-web';
  
  // Define resource and service attributes
  const resource = defaultResource().merge(
    resourceFromAttributes({
      'service.name': '<service_name>',
      'service.version': '0.1.0',
    })
  );
  
  // Set up the OTLP trace exporter
  const exporter = new OTLPTraceExporter({
    url: 'http://localhost:4318/v1/traces',
  });
  
  // Set up the span processor
  const processor = new BatchSpanProcessor(exporter);
  
  // Create and configure the WebTracerProvider
  const provider = new WebTracerProvider({
    resource: resource,
    spanProcessors: [processor], // Add the span processor here
  });
  
  // Register the tracer provider with the context manager
  provider.register({
    contextManager: new ZoneContextManager(),
  });
  
  // Set up automatic instrumentation for web APIs
  registerInstrumentations({
    instrumentations: [
      getWebAutoInstrumentations({
        '@opentelemetry/instrumentation-xml-http-request': {
          propagateTraceHeaderCorsUrls: [
            /.+/g, // Regex to match your backend URLs
          ],
        },
        '@opentelemetry/instrumentation-fetch': {
          propagateTraceHeaderCorsUrls: [
            /.+/g, // Regex to match your backend URLs
          ],
        },
      }),
    ],
  });

<service_name> is name of your service

Step 3. Import tracing.js / tracing.ts file in main.jsx

//main.tsx

import './tracing.ts';

Step 4. You can validate if your application is sending traces to SigNoz cloud here.

In case you encounter an issue where all applications do not get listed in the services section then please refer to the troubleshooting section.

Validating instrumentation by checking for traces

With your application running, you can verify that you’ve instrumented your application with OpenTelemetry correctly by confirming that tracing data is being reported to SigNoz.

To do this, you need to ensure that your application generates some data. Applications will not produce traces unless they are being interacted with, and OpenTelemetry will often buffer data before sending. So you need to interact with your application and wait for some time to see your tracing data in SigNoz.

Validate your traces in SigNoz:

Trigger an action in your app that generates a web request. Hit the endpoint a number of times to generate some data. Then, wait for some time.
In SigNoz, open the Services tab. Hit the Refresh button on the top right corner, and your application should appear in the list of Applications.
Go to the Traces tab, and apply relevant filters to see your application’s traces.

Sample React App

We have included a sample applications at: Sample ReactJs App Github Repo

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