Getting Started

OpenTelemetry for .NET is unique among OpenTelemetry implementations, as it is integrated with the .NET System.Diagnostics library. At a high level, you can think of OpenTelemetry for .NET as a bridge between the telemetry available through System.Diagnostics and the greater OpenTelemetry ecosystem, such as OpenTelemetry Protocol (OTLP) and the OpenTelemetry Collector.

Installation

You can find OpenTelemetry packages on NuGet. Install them to your project file using the dotnet command line utility or through PackageReference statements in your csproj file.

Initialization and Configuration

OpenTelemetry should be configured as part of your services initialization. In ASP.NET Core, you’ll want to add it to the IServiceCollection that is created in public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services), in Startup.cs. For ASP.NET, configuration occurs in Global.asax.cs.

You can find a variety of code samples demonstrating how to initialize and configure OpenTelemetry for .NET here

Creating a Tracer Provider

In order to create and process traces, a tracer provider must be created. We’ll look at two ways to do this - one for a console application, and one for ASP.NET Core. The biggest difference you should note here is that if you’re using ASP.NET, then the OpenTelemetry libraries will automatically register with the ActivitySource provided by the framework, meaning you don’t need to create and manage activity sources yourself.

Console

First, you’ll need to declare an ActivitySource for the tracer provider to read from.

private static readonly ActivitySource MyActivitySource = new ActivitySource("MySource");

Then, inside your main function, initialize a provider:

var tracerProvider = Sdk.CreateTracerProviderBuilder()
  .SetSampler(new AlwaysOnSampler())
  .AddSource("MySource")
  .AddConsoleExporter()
  .Build();

ASP.NET Core

In Startup.cs, add a new service to your IServiceCollection:

public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
{
  // other configuration here...
  services.AddOpenTelemetryTracing((builder) => builder
    .AddAspNetCoreInstrumentation()
    .AddConsoleExporter());
}

Creating a Console Exporter

The console exporter doesn’t require any special configuration, however, you can pass a ConsoleExporterOptions object to it in order to set the destination (either stdout or debug console). See the exporter page in GitHub for details.

Quick Start

Putting it together, a simple example of creating traces in a console application is as follows:

using System.Diagnostics;
using OpenTelemetry;
using OpenTelemetry.Trace;

public class Program
{
    private static readonly ActivitySource MyActivitySource = new ActivitySource(
        "MyCompany.MyProduct.MyLibrary");

    public static void Main()
    {
        using var tracerProvider = Sdk.CreateTracerProviderBuilder()
            .SetSampler(new AlwaysOnSampler())
            .AddSource("MyCompany.MyProduct.MyLibrary")
            .AddConsoleExporter()
            .Build();

        using (var activity = MyActivitySource.StartActivity("SayHello"))
        {
            activity?.SetTag("foo", 1);
            activity?.SetTag("bar", "Hello, World!");
            activity?.SetTag("baz", new int[] { 1, 2, 3 });
        }
    }
}

You can find a quick start example of an ASP.NET Core application here