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This documentation explains how to configure AppSignal for Ruby to use the AppSignal Collector to send data to AppSignal. This documentation assumes that you have already followed the installation instructions. This is an experimental feature. Distributed tracing is only available when using the AppSignal hosted collector.

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Requirements

Collector mode ships in a pre-release version of the appsignal gem. Collector mode requires Ruby 3.1 or newer. On older Ruby versions the collector_endpoint option is ignored. Collector mode does not support JRuby. It depends on how Ruby handles forking, which JRuby does something different with.

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Installing the OpenTelemetry gems

Collector mode sends data using OpenTelemetry. The appsignal gem does not install the OpenTelemetry gems, so add appsignal-opentelemetry next to the gem "appsignal" line already in your Gemfile:
Then run bundle install. The appsignal-opentelemetry gem does nothing on its own. It only installs the OpenTelemetry gem versions that collector mode supports, so you do not have to track them yourself. Its version matches the appsignal gem, so appsignal-opentelemetry 5.0.0 pairs with appsignal 5.0.0. If those gems are missing or their versions are unsupported, AppSignal logs a warning at startup and does not enter collector mode.

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Deploying a collector

You can have AppSignal host a collector for you using the “Hosted Collector” page in your organization’s settings.

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Configuring the collector

Set the collector_endpoint configuration option to the address of your collector. When using a hosted collector, this address can be found under “Collector URL” in the “Hosted Collector” settings page. Set the service_name option as well. It names this application among the services reporting to your collector, so a trace that crosses several of them shows which service did what.
AppSignal for Ruby now sends its traces, metrics, and logs to the configured collector. AppSignal builds its traces out of OpenTelemetry spans when it reports to a collector. Read AppSignal for Ruby and OpenTelemetry for how to describe those spans yourself, and how AppSignal works together with instrumentation you write with the OpenTelemetry SDK.