Tracing

Tracing

go-zero uses OpenTelemetry for distributed tracing, automatically creating spans for every HTTP request and gRPC call.

Configuration

etc/app.yaml

Telemetry:
  Name: order-api
  Endpoint: http://jaeger:14268/api/traces
  Sampler: 1.0          # 0.0–1.0; use 0.1 in production
  Batcher: jaeger        # "jaeger" | "zipkin" | "otlpgrpc" | "otlphttp"

What Is Traced Automatically

• Every inbound HTTP request → span with URL, method, status code
• Every outbound zrpc call → child span with service/method
• SQL queries (via sqlx) → child span with query string

Custom Spans

import (
    "go.opentelemetry.io/otel"
    "go.opentelemetry.io/otel/attribute"
)

func (l *OrderLogic) processPayment(amount int64) error {
    tracer := otel.Tracer("order-service")
    _, span := tracer.Start(l.ctx, "process-payment")
    defer span.End()

    span.SetAttributes(
        attribute.Int64("amount", amount),
        attribute.String("currency", "USD"),
    )

    if err := chargeCard(amount); err != nil {
        span.RecordError(err)
        return err
    }
    return nil
}

Backends

Backend	Batcher value	Notes
Jaeger	jaeger	All-in-one image available
Zipkin	zipkin	Lightweight alternative
OTLP gRPC	otlpgrpc	OpenTelemetry Collector
OTLP HTTP	otlphttp	OpenTelemetry Collector