Instrumentation

Instrumentation Ash has two primary components, Ash.Tracer and :telemetry . Instrumentation is closely tied to observability and monitoring.

Telemetry

Ash emits the following telemetry events, suffixed with :start and :stop . Start events have system_time measurements, and stop events have system_time and duration measurements. All times will be in the native time unit.

Important

Note the mention of :start and :stop suffixes. The event below [:ash, (api_short_name), :create] , is actually referring to two events, [:ash, (api_short_name), :create, :start] and [:ash, (api_short_name), :create, :stop] .

Replace (api_short_name) with your API short name, from d:Ash.Api.Info.short_name .

Events

• [:ash, (api_short_name), :create] - The execution of a create action. Use resource_short_name and action metadata to break down measurements.
• [:ash, (api_short_name), :update] - The execution of a update action. Use resource_short_name and action metadata to break down measurements.
• [:ash, (api_short_name), :read] - The execution of a read action. Use resource_short_name and action metadata to break down measurements.
• [:ash, (api_short_name), :destroy] - The execution of a destroy action. Use resource_short_name and action metadata to break down measurements.
• [:ash, :changeset] - A changeset being processed for a given action, i.e with Ash.Changeset.for_create . Use resource_short_name metadata to break down measurements.
• [:ash, :query] - A query being processed for an action, with Ash.Query.for_read . Use resource_short_name metadata to break down measurements.
• [:ash, :validation] - A validation being run on a changeset. Use resource_short_name and validation metadata to break down measurements.
• [:ash, :change] - A change being run on a changeset. Use resource_short_name and change metadata to break down measurements.
• [:ash, :before_action] - A before_action being run on a changeset. Use resource_short_name to break down measurements.
• [:ash, :after_action] - An after_action being run on a changeset. Use resource_short_name to break down measurements.
• [:ash, :preparation] - A preparation being run on a changeset. Use resource_short_name and preparation metadata to break down measurements.
• [:ash, :request_step] - The resolution of an internal request. Ash breaks up its operations internally into multiple requests, this can give you a high resolution insight onto the execution of those internal requests resolution. Use name metadata to break down measurements.
• [:ash, :flow] - The execution of an Ash flow. Use flow_short_name to break down measurements.
• [:ash, :flow, :custom_step] - The execution of a custom flow step (only if using the built in runner, which is currently the only runner). Use flow_short_name and name metadata to break down measurements.

Tracing

Tracing is very similar to telemetry, but gives you some additional hooks to set_span_context() and get_span_context() . This allows you to “move” some piece of context between two processes. Ash will call this whenever it starts a new process to do anything. What this means is that if you are using a tracing tool or library you can ensure that any processes spawned by Ash are properly included in the trace. Additionally, you should be able to integrate a tracing library to include Ash actions/spans relatively easily by implementing the other callbacks.

A tracer can be configured globally in application config.

config :ash, :tracer, MyApp.Tracer

Additionally, one can be provide when creating changesets or calling an api, i.e

Resource
# better to put it here, as changesets are traced as well. It will be carried over to the api action
|> Ash.Changeset.for_create(:create, %{}, tracer: MyApp.Tracer)
# but you can also pass it here.
|> Api.create!(tracer: MyApp.Tracer)

For customizing the names created for each span, see:

• d:Ash.Api.Dsl.execution|trace_name
• d:Ash.Resource.Dsl.resource|trace_name
• d:Ash.Flow.Dsl.flow|trace_name

Trace types

These are the list of trace types.

• :custom
• :action
• :changeset
• :validation
• :change
• :before_transaction
• :before_action
• :after_transaction
• :after_action
• :request_step
• :custom_flow_step
• :flow
• :query
• :preparation

After/Before Action Hooks

Due to the way before/after action hooks run, their execution time won’t be included in the span created for the change. In practice, before/after action hooks are where the long running operations tend to be. We start a corresponding span and emit a telemetry event for before and after hooks, but they are only so useful. In a trace, they can highlight that “some hook” took a long time. In telemetry metrics they are of even less use. The cardinality of the metric would be extremely high, and we don’t have a “name” or anything to distinguish them. To that end, you can use the macros & functions available in Ash.Tracer to create custom spans and/or emit custom telemetry events from your hooks. They automatically handle cases where the provided tracer is nil , for convenience. For example:

defmodule MyApp.CustomChange do
  use Ash.Resource.Change

  require Ash.Tracer

  def change(changeset, _, _) do
    changeset
    |> Ash.Changeset.before_action(fn changeset ->
      Ash.Tracer.span(:custom, "custom name", changeset.context[:private][:tracer]) do
        # optionally set some metadata
        metadata = %{...}
        Ash.Tracer.set_metadata(changeset.context[:private][:tracer], :custom, metadata)
        # will get `:start` and `:stop` suffixed events emitted
        Ash.Tracer.telemetry_span([:telemetry, :event, :name], metadata) do
          ## Your logic here
        end
      end
    end)
  end
end