Getting grpc auto-instrumenation to work for clients created via nice-grpc package

[jvwiz]

We utilize nice-grpc npm package, and are using ClientFactory to create grpc clients that we are using in our application. we wanted to get auto instrumentation for grpc client to be able trace our grpc client calls to the backend grpc server. I tried to use the opentelemetry-instrumentation-grpc, however I understand that it would not work as patching is applied via different set of function/classes which are specific to grpc-js. Nice-grpc also uses some of components from grpc-js, but different set of client and factory methods/classes.

Any guidance on how to get auto instrumentation to work for grpc clients created via nice-grpc package? Anyone else implemented this as custom instrumentation and willing to share?

[dyladan]

Most likely this would require either a new instrumentation or modifications to the existing grpc instrumentation. I don't know enough about the nice-grpc internals to estimate how much work that might be.

[Flarna]

It seems nice-grpc uses @grpc/grpc-js internally (at least it has it as dependency here).

Therefore I would assume that @opentelemetry/instrumentation-grpc should be able to trace the grpc operations out of the box.

[dyladan]

He mentioned in the question he tried that. I suspect it is using some internals that get past our patching.

[Flarna]

Might be a bug/limitation in @opentelemetry/instrumentation-grpc that it doesn't cover all variants of the grpc-js API.
Might be also an issue in how to use it, e.g. register the instrumenation too late.