Monitor Django with OpenTelemetry
Django is a high-level Python web framework that enables rapid development of secure and maintainable websites.
In this article you will learn how to monitor and optimize Django performance using OpenTelemetry observability framework.
What is OpenTelemetry?
OpenTelemetry is a vendor-neutral standard that allows you to collect and export traces, logs, and metrics.
OpenTelemetry is a community-driven open source project that offers several components:
OpenTelemetry API is a programming interface that you can use to instrument code and collect telemetry data.
OpenTelemetry SDK is the official implementation of OpenTelemetry API that processes and exports collected telemetry to backends.
OpenTelemetry Collector is a proxy between your application and a backend. It receives telemetry data, transforms and exports it to backends that can store it permanently. Collector can also act as an agent that pulls telemetry data from monitored systems, for example, Redis or host metrics.
OpenTelemetry API and SDK are available for most programming languages and allows to send telemetry data to any tracing tool of your choice.
Installation
To instrument Django app, you need a correspoding Django instrumentation:
pip install opentelemetry-instrumentation-django
Usage
Django instrumentation uses DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE env variable to find settings file. Django defines that variable in manage.py file so you should instrument Django app from that file:
# manage.py
from opentelemetry.instrumentation.django import DjangoInstrumentor
def main():
# DjangoInstrumentor uses DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE to instrument the project.
# Make sure the var is available before you call the DjangoInstrumentor.
os.environ.setdefault("DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE", "mysite.settings")
DjangoInstrumentor().instrument()
See example for details.
Instrumenting PostgreSQL engine
You can configure Django to use PostgreSQL by changing settings.py:
DATABASES = {
'default': {
'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.postgresql',
'NAME': 'mydatabase',
'USER': 'mydatabaseuser',
'PASSWORD': 'mypassword',
'HOST': '127.0.0.1',
'PORT': '5432',
}
}
Internally, postgresql' engine uses psycopg2 library. To instrument psycopg2, you need a corresponding instrumentation:
pip install opentelemetry-instrumentation-psycopg2
Then actually instrument the library from the main function:
from opentelemetry.instrumentation.psycopg2 import Psycopg2Instrumentor
Psycopg2Instrumentor().instrument()
Instrumenting MySQL engine
You can configure Django to use MySQL by changing settings.py:
DATABASES = {
'default': {
'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.mysql',
'NAME': 'mydatabase',
'USER': 'mydatabaseuser',
'PASSWORD': 'mypassword',
'HOST': '127.0.0.1',
'PORT': '3306',
}
}
Internally, mysql engine uses mysqlclient library that implements Python Database API. To instrument any library that uses Python DB API, you need the opentelemetry-instrumentation-dbapi instrumentation:
pip install opentelemetry-instrumentation-dbapi
Then actually instrument the mysqlclient library from the main function:
import MySQLdb
from opentelemetry.instrumentation.dbapi import trace_integration
trace_integration(MySQLdb, "connect", "mysql")
Instrumenting SQLite engine
You can configure Django to use SQLite by changing settings.py:
DATABASES = {
"default": {
"ENGINE": "django.db.backends.sqlite3",
"NAME": BASE_DIR / "db.sqlite3",
}
}
Internally, sqlite3 Django engine uses sqlite3 Python library. To instrument sqlite3, you need a corresponding instrumentation:
pip install opentelemetry-instrumentation-sqlite3
Then actually instrument the sqlite3 library from the main function:
from opentelemetry.instrumentation.sqlite3 import SQLite3Instrumentor
SQLite3Instrumentor().instrument()
What is Uptrace?
Need a backend to store telemetry data collected by OpenTelemetry instrumentations?
Uptrace is an open source APM for OpenTelemetry with an intuitive query builder, rich dashboards, automatic alerts, and integrations for most languages and frameworks.
You can get started with Uptrace by downloading a DEB/RPM package or a pre-compiled Go binary.
What's next?
Next, instrument more operations, for example, database queries and network calls. You can also learn about OpenTelemetry Python Tracing API to create your own instrumentations.
See also:
