OpenTelemetry::SemanticConventions

The opentelemetry-semantic_conventions gem provides auto-generated constants that represent the OpenTelemetry Semantic Conventions.

What is OpenTelemetry?

OpenTelemetry is an open source observability framework, providing a general-purpose API, SDK, and related tools required for the instrumentation of cloud-native software, frameworks, and libraries.

OpenTelemetry provides a single set of APIs, libraries, agents, and collector services to capture distributed traces and metrics from your application. You can analyze them using Prometheus, Jaeger, and other observability tools.

How does this gem fit in?

The opentelemetry-semantic_conventions gem provides auto-generated constants that represent the OpenTelemetry Semantic Conventions. They may be referenced in instrumentation or end-user code in place of hard-coding the names of the conventions. Because they are generated from the YAML models in the specification, they are kept up-to-date for you.

How do I get started?

Install the gem using:

gem install opentelemetry-semantic_conventions

Or, if you use Bundler, include opentelemetry-semantic_conventions in your Gemfile.

How do I use the gem?

The gem's versions match the corresponding OpenTelemetry Semantic Convention versions.

In version 1.36.0, we established a new pattern for naming the constants:

  • OpenTelemetry::SemConv::Incubating::#{CATEGORY_NAME} is the prefix for experimental, development, or deprecated constants
  • OpenTelemetry::SemConv::#{CATEGORY_NAME} is the prefix for stable constants

Incubating constants will never be removed. If an incubating constant becomes stable, it will be copied into the stable namespace and the value will be available from two constants. The new constant's name will be the same, except the Incubating namespace will be removed.

Prior to 1.36.0 (last version 1.11.0), constants follow a different naming pattern: OpenTelemetry::SemanticConventions::#{CATEGORY_NAME}

These constants will be preserved to avoid breaking changes for users who rely on the old constants. These constants do not differentiate between stable and unstable constants. New constants will not be added to this namespace.

We recommend you require only the files that contain the constants you are going to use. For example, if you were creating instrumentation for an HTTP Client that emits only stable conventions, you would likely require:

require 'opentelemetry/semconv/http'

If you want to require all of the 1.11.0 constants, you can use:

require 'opentelemetry/semantic_conventions'

# Use the constants however you feel necessary, eg:

puts "This is the value of #{OpenTelemetry::SemanticConventions::Trace::DB_USER}"

The constant names can be very long. You can consider aliasing the long bit in another constant to save your fingertips some trouble.

SEMCONV_HTTP_INC = OpenTelemetry::SemConv::Incubating::HTTP

SEMCONV_HTTP_INC::HTTP_REQUEST_METHOD # which would return 'http.request.method'

What's up with the gem's versions?

This gem doesn't follow semantic versioning. Instead, the version matches the upstream OpenTelemetry Semantic Conventions version.

How do I rebuild the conventions?

To build the library against a new version of the semantic conventions, update SPEC_VERSION in the Rakefile, and then run rake generate.

Do not update the library's VERSION in version.rb. That will be handled by the automation for releasing the gem.

How can I get involved?

The opentelemetry-semantic_conventions gem source is on GitHub, along with related gems.

The OpenTelemetry Ruby gems are maintained by the OpenTelemetry-Ruby special interest group (SIG). You can get involved by joining us in GitHub Discussions or attending our weekly meeting. See the meeting calendar for dates and times. For more information on this and other language SIGs, see the OpenTelemetry community page.

License

The opentelemetry-semantic_conventions gem is distributed under the Apache 2.0 license. See LICENSE for more information.