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Status Functionality already exists
Workspace Instana
Categories Logging Tracing
Created by Guest
Created on Aug 26, 2022

Add (java) context to logs

We're currently writing java logs with logback/slf4j. Using the logstash ArgumentsJsonProvider in our logback.xml this allows us to extend the log message with context information like stack_traces, logger_name, log level but also custom information appended to the MDC (org.slf4j.MDC) which we're using to add http call information.


All this information is written to a json file that is forwarded to our log management system. With instana this sort of information is missing.


Please add the slf4j context to Instana logs.

Idea priority High
  • Guest
    Reply
    |
    Oct 5, 2022

    Thanks for your feedback.

    The file written to disk actually contains the instana trace id.
    So that works for us. However, to be able to use Instana Log Analytics we'd require the information from MDC in Log Analytics.

  • Guest
    Reply
    |
    Oct 5, 2022

    Our engineer has investigated into this, they think it might need some configuration to make it work:

    "The library is using logback APIs, we support adding MDC there, if the specific JSON provider requires the mdc names to be set, then instana trace id needs to be set as well. The mdc field name would be instana.trace.id"

  • Guest
    Reply
    |
    Sep 30, 2022

    Thanks for reaching out.

    We instrument slf4j and automatically populates the MDC with the trace ID https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/instana-observability/current?topic=technologies-monitoring-java-virtual-machine#logging. If the implementation of slf4j you are using respect the slf4j spec it should work. Although It could be a configuration you need to do for logstach.

    Our engineer team will take a look and get back to you.