Python

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Python

Send traces from a Python service to Watchtower over OTLP/HTTP with the standard OpenTelemetry SDK. Nothing Watchtower-specific is installed: the SDK reads the standard OTEL_* variables.

  1. Create a project, then an ingestion key (wti_...) with the ingest:traces scope. The key is shown once.

  2. Point the SDK at the gateway and pass the key in the x-watchtower-key header (Authorization: Bearer wti_... works too):

export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=https://ingest.example.com
export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_PROTOCOL=http/protobuf
export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_HEADERS=x-watchtower-key=wti_YOUR_KEY
export OTEL_SERVICE_NAME=my-service

  1. Add the SDK and run this once. The endpoint above is the gateway's base URL; the SDK appends /v1/traces.

pip install opentelemetry-sdk opentelemetry-exporter-otlp-proto-http
from opentelemetry import trace
from opentelemetry.exporter.otlp.proto.http.trace_exporter import OTLPSpanExporter
from opentelemetry.sdk.trace import TracerProvider
from opentelemetry.sdk.trace.export import BatchSpanProcessor

provider = TracerProvider()
provider.add_span_processor(BatchSpanProcessor(OTLPSpanExporter()))  # reads OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_*
trace.set_tracer_provider(provider)

with trace.get_tracer("onboarding").start_as_current_span("hello-watchtower"):
    pass
provider.shutdown()

  1. Open the project's onboarding screen. It polls GET /v1/projects/{prj}/onboarding/first-event and turns green when the first span arrives. Then open the trace in the trace explorer.

Updated