Getting Started
Get up and running with OpenTelemetry for PHP.
PHP
A language-specific implementation of OpenTelemetry in PHP.This is the OpenTelemetry PHP documentation. OpenTelemetry is an observability framework – an API, SDK, and tools that are designed to aid in the generation and collection of application telemetry data such as metrics, logs, and traces. This documentation is designed to help you understand how to get started using OpenTelemetry PHP.
Status and Releases
The current status of the major functional components for OpenTelemetry PHP is as follows:
| Traces | Metrics | Logs |
|---|---|---|
| Stable | Stable | Stable |
For releases, including the latest release, see Releases.
Further Reading
Requirements
OpenTelemetry for PHP requires a minimum PHP version of 7.4, and auto-instrumentation requires version 8.0+.
Dependencies
Some of the SDK and Contrib packages have a dependency on both a
HTTP Factories (PSR-17) and a
php-http/async-client
implementation. You can find appropriate composer packages implementing given
standards on packagist.org.
See
http-factory-implementations
to find a PSR-17 (HTTP factories) implementation, and
async-client-implementations
to find a php-http/async-client implementation.
Optional PHP extensions
| Extension | Purpose |
|---|---|
| ext-grpc | Required to use gRPC as a transport for the OTLP exporter |
| ext-mbstring | More performant than the fallback, symfony/polyfill-mbstring |
| ext-zlib | If you want to compress exported data |
| ext-ffi | Fiber-based context storage |
| ext-protobuf | Significant performance improvement for otlp+protobuf exporting |
ext-ffi
Fibers support can be enabled by setting the OTEL_PHP_FIBERS_ENABLED
environment variable to true. Using fibers with non-CLI SAPIs may require
preloading of bindings. One way to achieve this is setting
ffi.preload
to src/Context/fiber/zend_observer_fiber.h and setting
opcache.preload to
vendor/autoload.php.
ext-protobuf
The native protobuf library is significantly slower than the extension. We strongly encourage the use of the extension.
Setup
OpenTelemetry for PHP is distributed via
packagist, in a number of
packages. We recommend that you install only the packages that you need, which
as a minimum is usually API, Context, SDK and an exporter.
We strongly encourage that your code only depend on classes and interfaces in
the API package.
Instrumentation
Manual instrumentation for OpenTelemetry PHP
Context
Learn how the context API works in instrumented applications.
Propagation
Context propagation for the PHP API
Registry
Instrumentation libraries, exporters and other useful components for OpenTelemetry PHP