Trace requests in a Go API

Use OpenTelemetry for application traces, standard application logs for logging, and OpenMetrics where metrics are exposed. Provider placement remains deployment configuration.

Create a traced API scaffold

From a parent directory, with baha installed:

baha app new observed-api --stack go --http --telemetry
cd observed-api
baha plan
baha up -e dev
baha doctor

up requires a configured runtime Target. The scaffold adds the OpenTelemetry SDK and OTLP HTTP trace exporter. It prepares OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT, OTEL_SERVICE_NAME, protocol, resource attributes and certificate bindings in .env.example.

Trace a business operation

After the generated telemetry setup, add a span around an order calculation:

tracer := otel.Tracer("orders")
ctx, span := tracer.Start(request.Context(), "calculate-order-total")
defer span.End()
// Pass ctx to database and outbound HTTP operations.

Here request is the HTTP handler's request. A configured exporter does not automatically instrument every operation: add spans or instrumentation libraries to your application.

Check the effective bindings with baha app env --format json and inspect workload logs with baha app logs app. baha doctor verifies configured capabilities; seeing your business span in a collector or trace UI requires sending an actual request through the instrumented code. Grafana or another visualization tool is optional ecosystem tooling.