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Please follow the installation guide first, when adding a new application to AppSignal. Then make sure to install the AppSignal collector before proceeding.

Configure OpenTelemetry in your application

OpenTelemetry must be initialized before your application starts, to ensure that all telemetry data is sent through the exporter to AppSignal. For example, in a web application, OpenTelemetry must be initialized before the routes are loaded and the server starts. Create an initOpenTelemetry() function like the one in the example below and add it to your application’s main file. Make sure to update the values below with your AppSignal application name, environment and push API key, and to replace the exporter endpoint with the address of your AppSignal collector if needed.
If your collector is accessible through HTTPS, remove the three lines that contain the WithInsecure() method call in the example config. To install the OpenTelemetry libraries imported in the example above, run this command.

Configure OpenTelemetry instrumentation packages

The OpenTelemetry stack will not emit any data by itself. To instrument your application, install and configure the instrumentation packages for the libraries and frameworks used by your application. You can find OpenTelemetry instrumentation packages at the OpenTelemetry registry. For some popular OpenTelemetry instrumentations, you can find specific configuration instructions in these pages:

Test the app!

Now that all the components are connected, start your app and test if you see data arrive in AppSignal. Check the “Errors > Issue list” and “Performance > Traces” page specifically. If after following our installation instructions you still don’t see data in AppSignal, let us know and we’ll help you finalize your OpenTelemetry installation!

Add Instrumentation Packages

The next step is to instrument Go packages like Gin-gonic, Gorilla, etc. This will provide much more data to really dig into the performance of your applications. The steps for every package are usually as follows:
  • Install the OpenTelemetry instrumentation package for the library you want to instrument.
  • Follow the installation instructions for the instrumentation package.
For more installation and configuration information per library, please consult the Go instrumentations section.