Monitor a Python app with Lampwick

Python apps send to Lampwick through OpenTelemetry. You start the app with opentelemetry-instrument and set environment variables; the code stays as it is. We tested FastAPI on uvicorn and Django with runserver.

What you get

• Requests, named after the route or URL pattern, such as GET /orders/{order_id}.
• Queries, linked to the request they ran in.
• Issues from unhandled exceptions with the stack trace, and handled ones from logger.exception.
• Logs from logging, linked to their request.

Set it up

In the app's virtualenv:

pip install opentelemetry-distro opentelemetry-exporter-otlp-proto-http
opentelemetry-bootstrap -a install

opentelemetry-bootstrap adds the instrumentations for what's installed. Run it again after adding a framework or database driver. Then set:

export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=https://app.lampwick.dev
export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_PROTOCOL=http/protobuf
export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_HEADERS=x-lampwick-token=YOUR_PROJECT_TOKEN
export OTEL_SERVICE_NAME=my-app
export OTEL_METRICS_EXPORTER=none
export OTEL_LOGS_EXPORTER=otlp

YOUR_PROJECT_TOKEN is the project's ingest token, from the Connect your app card on its Settings page. Python defaults to gRPC, which Lampwick doesn't accept, so keep OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_PROTOCOL. Start the app through the instrumentation:

opentelemetry-instrument uvicorn main:app --port 8000

For Django, set DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE and turn the autoreloader off:

export DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=mysite.settings
opentelemetry-instrument python manage.py runserver --noreload

What it doesn't do

• connection.execute() on sqlite3 isn't traced, only cursor.execute(). Django and SQLAlchemy use cursors.
• Info logs need a level: Python drops records below WARNING unless you configure logging.
• gunicorn and uWSGI fork workers after the SDK starts. We haven't tested the post_fork hook they need.

Let your agent do it

Add OpenTelemetry to this Python app so it reports to Lampwick: follow https://lampwick.dev/docs/python.md exactly (opentelemetry-distro, opentelemetry-bootstrap, opentelemetry-instrument, the environment variables). Read the ingest token from the environment, never commit it.

Next step

The Python docs have the apps we tested, what showed up and the troubleshooting table. How spans map to Lampwick: OpenTelemetry.