distributed-tracing

A small distributed tracer: spans with traceId/spanId/parentSpanId, spec-correct W3C traceparent header inject/extract, child spans, tags, timestamped events, duration, and a pluggable exporter interface — zero runtime dependencies.

This is not a full OpenTelemetry SDK — no automatic instrumentation, no context propagation via async hooks, no OTLP wire format. It's the minimal, correct core (span model + W3C header handling) you can wire into whatever HTTP client/server you're already using.

Install

npm install distributed-tracing

Quickstart

import { Tracer, ConsoleExporter } from "distributed-tracing";

const tracer = new Tracer({ exporter: new ConsoleExporter() });

const span = tracer.startSpan("http.request GET /users");
span.setTag("http.route", "/users");

const dbSpan = span.startChild("db.query users.select");
// ... do the query ...
dbSpan.end();

// Propagate to a downstream call:
const header = span.toTraceparent();
await fetch("https://downstream/api", { headers: { traceparent: header } });

span.end(); // exports via the configured Exporter

On the receiving service:

const serverSpan = tracer.startSpanFromHeader(
  "http.request POST /api",
  req.headers["traceparent"]
);
// same traceId as the caller, parented to its span

API

new Tracer({ exporter })

• startSpan(name: string, parentContext?: TraceContext): Span — starts a new trace if no parent, otherwise continues one.
• startSpanFromHeader(name: string, traceparentHeader: string | null | undefined): Span — parses the header and continues that trace, or starts a fresh one if the header is missing/malformed.

Span

• setTag(key, value): this
• addEvent(name, attributes?): this
• startChild(name): Span — shares traceId, parented to this span.
• toTraceparent(): string — the W3C header value to send downstream.
• end(): SpanData — finalizes duration and exports. Idempotent.
• .traceId / .spanId

W3C traceparent header

• injectTraceparent(ctx: TraceContext): string — formats 00-<32 hex traceId>-<16 hex spanId>-<flags> per the W3C Trace Context spec.
• extractTraceparent(header): TraceContext | undefined — parses and validates; returns undefined for anything that doesn't match spec (wrong lengths, all-zero ids, version ff), so a malformed header degrades to "start a new trace" instead of crashing.

Exporters

interface Exporter {
  export(span: SpanData): void | Promise<void>;
}

• ConsoleExporter — one log line per finished span.
• InMemoryExporter — collects spans; .getSpans(), .getSpansForTrace(traceId), .clear().

buildTraceTree(spans: SpanData[]): SpanTreeNode[]

Assembles a flat span list (e.g. from InMemoryExporter) into a parent/children tree, rooted at spans whose parent is absent or wasn't captured (crossed a boundary you didn't collect).

Design notes

The traceparent implementation follows the W3C spec's exact grammar (version-traceid-parentid-flags, all lowercase hex, fixed widths) and rejects the spec's explicit invalid cases (all-zero ids, version ff) rather than trying to be lenient — a tracer that silently accepts malformed context can stitch unrelated requests into the same trace, which is worse than starting a fresh one. The exporter is an interface, not a bundled HTTP/OTLP client, because where spans go (stdout, a collector, a test assertion) is a deployment decision this library shouldn't make for you.

Sponsored by Ferrow

Part of the ferrow-toolkit collection · Sponsored by Ferrow