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Custom Instrumentation

To instrument certain regions of your code, you can create transactions to capture them.

The following example creates a transaction that contains an expensive operation (for example, processOrderBatch), and sends the result to Sentry:

Copied
import io.sentry.ITransaction;
import io.sentry.Sentry;
import io.sentry.SpanStatus;

// A good name for the transaction is key, to help identify what this is about
ITransaction transaction = Sentry.startTransaction("processOrderBatch()", "task");
try {
  processOrderBatch();
} catch (Exception e) {
  transaction.setThrowable(e);
  transaction.setStatus(SpanStatus.INTERNAL_ERROR);
  throw e;
} finally {
  transaction.finish();
}

Add More Spans to the Transaction

By default, transactions are not bound to the scope. Transaction has to be passed manually as a method parameter to enable attaching nested spans. When creating nested span, you can choose the value of operation and description.

Copied
import java.io.FileNotFoundException;

import io.sentry.ISpan;
import io.sentry.ITransaction;
import io.sentry.Sentry;
import io.sentry.SpanStatus;

// A good name for the transaction is key, to help identify what this is about
ITransaction transaction = Sentry.startTransaction("processOrderBatch()", "task");
try {
  processOrderBatch(transaction);
} catch (Exception e) {
  transaction.setThrowable(e);
  transaction.setStatus(SpanStatus.INTERNAL_ERROR);
  throw e;
} finally {
  transaction.finish();
}

void processOrderBatch(ISpan span) {
  if (span == null) {
    span = Sentry.startTransaction("processOrderBatch()", "task");
  }
  // span operation: task, span description: operation
  ISpan innerSpan = span.startChild("task", "operation");
  try {
    // omitted code
  } catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
    innerSpan.setThrowable(e);
    innerSpan.setStatus(SpanStatus.NOT_FOUND);
    throw e;
  } finally {
    innerSpan.finish();
  }
}

Keep in mind that each individual span also needs to be manually finished; otherwise, spans will not show up in the transaction.

Spans are sent together with their parent transaction when the transaction is finished. Make sure to call finish() on transaction once all the child spans have finished.

Create Transaction Bound to The Current Scope

Our SDK can bind a transaction to the scope making it accessible to every method running within this scope by calling Sentry#startTransaction method with bindToScope parameter to true.

In cases where you want to attach Spans to an already ongoing Transaction you can use Sentry#getSpan. This method will return a SentryTransaction in case there is a running Transaction or a Span in case there is already a running Span, otherwise it returns null.

Copied
import java.io.FileNotFoundException;

import io.sentry.ISpan;
import io.sentry.ITransaction;
import io.sentry.Sentry;
import io.sentry.SpanStatus;

// A good name for the transaction is key, to help identify what this is about
ITransaction transaction = Sentry.startTransaction("processOrderBatch()", "task", true);
try {
  processOrderBatch();
} catch (Exception e) {
  transaction.setThrowable(e);
  transaction.setStatus(SpanStatus.INTERNAL_ERROR);
  throw e;
} finally {
  transaction.finish();
}

void processOrderBatch() {
  ISpan span = Sentry.getSpan();
  if (span == null) {
    span = Sentry.startTransaction("processOrderBatch()", "task");
  }
  ISpan innerSpan = span.startChild("task", "operation");
  try {
    // omitted code
  } catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
    innerSpan.setThrowable(e);
    innerSpan.setStatus(SpanStatus.NOT_FOUND);
    throw e;
  } finally {
    innerSpan.finish();
  }
}

Connect Errors with Spans

Sentry errors can be linked with transactions and spans.

Errors reported to Sentry while transaction or span bound to the scope is running are linked automatically:

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import io.sentry.Sentry;
import io.sentry.ISpan;

ITransaction span = Sentry.startTransaction(item.getTransactionName(), "task", true);
try {
  processItem();
} catch (Exception e) {
  Sentry.captureException(e);
} finally {
  span.finish();
}

Exceptions may be thrown within spans that can finish before exception gets reported to Sentry. To attach span information to this exception, you must link it by calling setThrowable method:

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import io.sentry.Sentry;
import io.sentry.ISpan;

ISpan span = Sentry.getSpan();
if (span == null) {
  span = Sentry.startTransaction(item.getTransactionName(), "task");
}
try {
  processItem();
} catch (Exception e) {
  span.setThrowable(e);
  throw e;
} finally {
  span.finish();
}

Distributed Tracing

Traces can bridge across multiple software services. Each span in a trace can be represented as a sentry-trace header, containing the trace id, span id, and sampling details. This sentry-trace header can be passed to downstream services so that they can create spans that are a continuation of the trace started in the originating service.

To obtain a trace header from the span, use ISpan#toSentryTrace() method. Then pass it to the downstream service. If the communication happens over HTTP, it's recommended that you set the value to the sentry-trace (also available as a constant SentryTraceHeader.SENTRY_TRACE_HEADER) HTTP header, as well as attaching the baggage header (BaggageHeader.BAGGAGE_HEADER) which can be retrieved from ISpan#toBaggageHeader(List<String>). You should also pass in any existing baggage header entries that are present on the outgoing request so we can handle duplicate Sentry entries and limits for you.

To create a span as a continuation of the trace retrieved from the upstream service, pass the sentry-trace and baggage header values to the transaction context:

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import io.sentry.Baggage;
import io.sentry.BaggageHeader;
import io.sentry.ITransaction;
import io.sentry.Sentry;
import io.sentry.SentryTraceHeader;
import io.sentry.TransactionContext;
import io.sentry.exception.InvalidSentryTraceHeaderException;

String sentryTrace = request.getHeader(SentryTraceHeader.SENTRY_TRACE_HEADER);
List<String> baggageHeaders = Collections.list(request.getHeaders(BaggageHeader.BAGGAGE_HEADER);
ITransaction transaction = null;
try {
  transaction = Sentry.startTransaction(
    TransactionContext.fromSentryTrace(
      "name",
      TransactionNameSource.CUSTOM,
      "op",
      new SentryTraceHeader(sentryTrace),
      Baggage.fromHeader(baggageHeaders)
    )
  );
} catch (InvalidSentryTraceHeaderException e) {
  // handle invalid trace header
}
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Package:
maven:io.sentry:sentry-android
Version:
6.18.1
Repository:
https://github.com/getsentry/sentry-java