<p>Ever had that “where did I go wrong?” moment while debugging your application? Well, <strong>instrumenting</strong> your application is almost like placing a security camera to <strong>monitor</strong> everything happening under the hood. And of course, <strong>Elastic APM</strong> and <strong>Kibana</strong> are a dynamic duo for that job.</p><p>If you’re developing in <strong>Golang</strong> and want full control over what’s happening in your application (and avoid nasty surprises), it’s time to integrate everything with Elastic APM. The best part: there are libraries that do the heavy lifting for you! Let’s take a look at some?</p><h4 id="o-que-%C3%A9-elastic-apm-e-por-que-voc%C3%AA-precisa-dele">What is Elastic APM and why do you need it?</h4><p>Elastic APM is basically the detective you hire to <strong>investigate</strong> everything happening in your application. It monitors performance, flags errors, and gives you a nicely laid out report in Kibana, all in <strong>real time</strong>. And since it has a ready-made <strong>implementation</strong> for Go, you can integrate it into your code in no time.</p><p>Now, if you’re thinking “cool, but I already use a logger in my app”, no worries! Several Go logger libraries already ship with APM implementations, which makes life easier for everyone.</p><h4 id="por-que-echo-zerolog">Why echo + zerolog?</h4><p>If you don’t know <strong>Echo</strong> yet, it’s the “Formula 1 car” of web frameworks in the Go world. Fast, efficient, and with an API that makes building REST APIs a breeze. Now, when you pair it with <strong>Zerolog</strong>, a super fast and minimalist logging library, you get a powerful combo.</p><h4 id="m%C3%A3os-a-obra">Let’s get to it!</h4><p>First, let’s structure our application. In this example we’ll need 3 custom packages: </p><ul><li>mylogger — to initialize our logger and standardize log calls</li><li>mytracer — to initialize the APM tracer of our application, centralizing the required configurations</li><li>myserver — to start the application server with the routes we’ll use</li></ul><p>It’ll look like this:</p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://blog.cloudscript.com.br/content/images/2024/10/image.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="302" height="364"></figure><h4 id="package-mylogger">Package: mylogger</h4><p>Here we have the <strong>Init() </strong>method where we configure the application’s logger, plus two log-event methods we’ll use as needed. In those events we already centralize some information that will be added to the logs through the context, like trace details, service name, and error when relevant.</p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://blog.cloudscript.com.br/content/images/2024/10/image-1.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="783" height="778" srcset="https://blog.cloudscript.com.br/content/images/size/w600/2024/10/image-1.png 600w, https://blog.cloudscript.com.br/content/images/2024/10/image-1.png 783w" sizes="(min-width: 720px) 720px"><figcaption><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">log.go</span></figcaption></figure><p></p><h4 id="package-mytracer">Package: mytracer</h4><p>Here we initialize the APM Tracer, which is what ships logs to Kibana.</p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://blog.cloudscript.com.br/content/images/2024/10/image-2.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="776" height="804" srcset="https://blog.cloudscript.com.br/content/images/size/w600/2024/10/image-2.png 600w, https://blog.cloudscript.com.br/content/images/2024/10/image-2.png 776w" sizes="(min-width: 720px) 720px"><figcaption><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">tracer.go</span></figcaption></figure><p></p><h4 id="package-myserver">Package: myserver</h4><p>Here we start our application server and add our routes. We also add a custom middleware to log requests in the application console, plus the apmecho middleware where we pass the tracer we created earlier so APM can capture requests and send them to Kibana automatically.</p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://blog.cloudscript.com.br/content/images/2024/10/image-3.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="717" height="794" srcset="https://blog.cloudscript.com.br/content/images/size/w600/2024/10/image-3.png 600w, https://blog.cloudscript.com.br/content/images/2024/10/image-3.png 717w"><figcaption><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">server.go</span></figcaption></figure><p>Here’s our custom middleware, which lets us format the log however we want and log the headers we configured in our environment variables.</p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://blog.cloudscript.com.br/content/images/2024/10/image-4.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="735" height="969" srcset="https://blog.cloudscript.com.br/content/images/size/w600/2024/10/image-4.png 600w, https://blog.cloudscript.com.br/content/images/2024/10/image-4.png 735w" sizes="(min-width: 720px) 720px"><figcaption><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">middleware.go</span></figcaption></figure><h4 id="package-main">Package: main</h4><p>To wrap up our application, let’s create the main.go file where we’ll initialize logger, tracer, and the server of our application.</p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://blog.cloudscript.com.br/content/images/2024/10/image-5.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="700" height="548" srcset="https://blog.cloudscript.com.br/content/images/size/w600/2024/10/image-5.png 600w, https://blog.cloudscript.com.br/content/images/2024/10/image-5.png 700w" sizes="(min-width: 720px) 720px"><figcaption><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">main.go</span></figcaption></figure><h4 id="configurando-o-ambiente">Configuring the environment</h4><p>In the ./cmd/ directory let’s add the .env file with the variables below so the APM tracer is properly configured in our application.</p><p>ELASTIC_APM_SERVICE_NAME=my-app<br>
ELASTIC_APM_SECRET_TOKEN=<br>
ELASTIC_APM_SERVER_URL=<a href="http://localhost:8200">http://localhost:8200</a><br>
ELASTIC_APM_ENVIRONMENT=local<br>
ELASTIC_APM_ENABLED=true<br>
ELASTIC_APM_ACTIVE=true<br>
ELASTIC_APM_LOG_LEVEL=debug<br>
ELASTIC_APM_LOG_FILE=stderr<br>
ELASTIC_APM_SERVICE_VERSION=1.0.0<br>
ELASTIC_APM_CAPTURE_BODY=all<br>
ELASTIC_APM_SANITIZE_FIELD_NAMES=password,secret,passwd,pwd,token #only for POST form fields<br>
LOG_HEADERS=true<br>
LOG_HEADERS_NAMES=header1,header2</p>
<p>With these settings we expect the request body to be captured and sent to APM, sensitive field values submitted in the form to be replaced with [REDACTED] (currently this only works when requests use form-data fields), and some headers to be logged to the application console when the request is received.</p><p>Now let’s hit our application to see the logs in the application console and the transactions in Elastic Kibana.</p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://blog.cloudscript.com.br/content/images/2024/10/image-6.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="1300" height="788" srcset="https://blog.cloudscript.com.br/content/images/size/w600/2024/10/image-6.png 600w, https://blog.cloudscript.com.br/content/images/size/w1000/2024/10/image-6.png 1000w, https://blog.cloudscript.com.br/content/images/2024/10/image-6.png 1300w" sizes="(min-width: 720px) 720px"><figcaption><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Sending the message request via Postman</span></figcaption></figure><p>These are the logs we get:</p><pre><code>{"level":"info","time":1729797526,"service_name":"my-app","trace.id":"a50295e9e1de4956b024b83544bf6d65","transaction.id":"a50295e9e1de4956","span.id":"a50295e9e1de4956","time":1729797526,"message":"Message received"}

{"level":"info","time":1729797526,"service_name":"my-app","trace.id":"a50295e9e1de4956b024b83544bf6d65","transaction.id":"a50295e9e1de4956","span.id":"a50295e9e1de4956","uri":"/message","status":200,"remote_ip":"::1","host":"localhost:8080","method":"POST","error":"","latency":"3.074167ms","user_agent":"PostmanRuntime/7.42.0","headers":{"Header1":["hello"],"Header2":["world"]},"time":1729797526,"time":1729797526,"message":"http_request"}

{"level":"debug","time":"2024-10-24T16:18:49-03:00","message":"sent request with 1 transaction, 0 spans, 0 errors, 1 metricset"}
{"level":"debug","time":"2024-10-24T16:19:09-03:00","message":"gathering metrics"}
</code></pre>
<h4 id="visualizando-a-requisi%C3%A7%C3%A3o-no-elastic-kibana"><strong>Visualizing the request in Elastic Kibana:</strong></h4><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://blog.cloudscript.com.br/content/images/2024/10/image-7.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="1455" height="955" srcset="https://blog.cloudscript.com.br/content/images/size/w600/2024/10/image-7.png 600w, https://blog.cloudscript.com.br/content/images/size/w1000/2024/10/image-7.png 1000w, https://blog.cloudscript.com.br/content/images/2024/10/image-7.png 1455w" sizes="(min-width: 720px) 720px"><figcaption><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Here we can see the transactions generated by our application through APM.</span></figcaption></figure><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://blog.cloudscript.com.br/content/images/2024/10/image-8.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="1430" height="686" srcset="https://blog.cloudscript.com.br/content/images/size/w600/2024/10/image-8.png 600w, https://blog.cloudscript.com.br/content/images/size/w1000/2024/10/image-8.png 1000w, https://blog.cloudscript.com.br/content/images/2024/10/image-8.png 1430w" sizes="(min-width: 720px) 720px"><figcaption><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Here we see the spans tied to the POST /message transaction, the request status, and the execution time.</span></figcaption></figure><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://blog.cloudscript.com.br/content/images/2024/10/image-9.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="1059" height="428" srcset="https://blog.cloudscript.com.br/content/images/size/w600/2024/10/image-9.png 600w, https://blog.cloudscript.com.br/content/images/size/w1000/2024/10/image-9.png 1000w, https://blog.cloudscript.com.br/content/images/2024/10/image-9.png 1059w" sizes="(min-width: 720px) 720px"><figcaption><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Drilling into the transaction details, we can see all the request information our application received.</span></figcaption></figure><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://blog.cloudscript.com.br/content/images/2024/10/image-10.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="904" height="254" srcset="https://blog.cloudscript.com.br/content/images/size/w600/2024/10/image-10.png 600w, https://blog.cloudscript.com.br/content/images/2024/10/image-10.png 904w" sizes="(min-width: 720px) 720px"><figcaption><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Still inside the transaction details, we can see the request body, already sanitized.</span></figcaption></figure><h4 id="como-tudo-isso-facilita-sua-vida">How all of this makes your life easier</h4><p>Picture the scene: your application is running and suddenly you notice something is off. Without an APM, you’d be stuck, hot-headed, hunting down the issue inside containers and reading hundreds of logs to understand it. But with instrumentation properly set up, you just open Kibana and there’s the villain of the story: logs, metrics, errors, all organized and ready for analysis.</p><p>The best part of using these libraries is that you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. They already ship with the integration to Elastic APM, which means less manual work and more time focused on what really matters: building amazing applications!</p><h4 id="e-a%C3%AD-pronto-para-monitorar-tudo">So, ready to monitor everything?</h4><p>Instrumenting your Go application with Elastic APM and Kibana is almost like handing yourself a superpower. You’ll have full control over what’s happening, spot bottlenecks, and avoid future headaches. And best of all: these logging libraries do all the heavy lifting for you.</p><p>Don’t forget! We at CloudScript are here to support you whenever you need.</p><p>Repository used in the example: <a href="https://github.com/jonathanschmittcs/go-intrumentation-echo-zerolog" rel="noreferrer">https://github.com/jonathanschmittcs/go-intrumentation-echo-zerolog</a></p><p>Cheers,</p><p>Jonathan Schmitt.</p><hr><figure class="kg-card kg-bookmark-card kg-card-hascaption"><a class="kg-bookmark-container" href="https://blog.cloudscript.com.br/o-poder-de-um-pipeline-com-previews-dinamicos-no-gitlab-2/"><div class="kg-bookmark-content"><div class="kg-bookmark-title">The power of a pipeline with dynamic previews on GitLab</div><div class="kg-bookmark-description">Speed up your QA team and improve delivery quality. Hey everyone, how’s it going? In the world of agile methodologies and DevOps, chasing shorter delivery cycles with higher quality is a constant priority. That’s why today we’re going to explore how to create a pipeline with dynamic previews</div><div class="kg-bookmark-metadata"><img class="kg-bookmark-icon" src="https://blog.cloudscript.com.br/content/images/size/w256h256/2024/10/cs-200.png" alt=""><span class="kg-bookmark-author">CloudScript.</span><span class="kg-bookmark-publisher">Helias Rodrigues</span></div></div><div class="kg-bookmark-thumbnail"><img src="https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1531030874896-fdef6826f2f7?crop=entropy&amp;cs=tinysrgb&amp;fit=max&amp;fm=jpg&amp;ixid=M3wxMTc3M3wwfDF8c2VhcmNofDF8fGdpdGxhYnxlbnwwfHx8fDE3MzY0MTkwMzB8MA&amp;ixlib=rb-4.0.3&amp;q=80&amp;w=2000" alt="" onerror="this.style.display = 'none'"></div></a><figcaption><p dir="ltr"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">SEE ALSO</span></p></figcaption></figure><figure class="kg-card kg-bookmark-card kg-card-hascaption"><a class="kg-bookmark-container" href="https://blog.cloudscript.com.br/deploy-com-github-actions-e-argocd/"><div class="kg-bookmark-content"><div class="kg-bookmark-title">Deploying with GitHub Actions and ArgoCD: simplifying the process</div><div class="kg-bookmark-description">Hey, DevOps! All good? In this post, we’re going to set everything up so you can spin up a build-and-deploy pipeline for your application using GitHub Actions and ArgoCD. If you already know GitHub and ArgoCD, even better — the idea here is to go straight to the point. Step 1: Get organized</div><div class="kg-bookmark-metadata"><img class="kg-bookmark-icon" src="https://blog.cloudscript.com.br/content/images/size/w256h256/2024/10/cs-200.png" alt=""><span class="kg-bookmark-author">CloudScript.</span><span class="kg-bookmark-publisher">Jonathan Schmitt</span></div></div><div class="kg-bookmark-thumbnail"><img src="https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1618401471353-b98afee0b2eb?crop=entropy&amp;cs=tinysrgb&amp;fit=max&amp;fm=jpg&amp;ixid=M3wxMTc3M3wwfDF8c2VhcmNofDR8fGdpdGh1YnxlbnwwfHx8fDE3MzA4MTM4NzZ8MA&amp;ixlib=rb-4.0.3&amp;q=80&amp;w=2000" alt="" onerror="this.style.display = 'none'"></div></a><figcaption><p dir="ltr"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">SEE ALSO</span></p></figcaption></figure>

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