Report Python application data using the SkyWalking Python SDK - Managed Service for OpenTelemetry

After you instrument your application with SkyWalking and report distributed tracing data to Managed Service for OpenTelemetry, Managed Service for OpenTelemetry starts to monitor your application. You can then view a range of monitoring data, such as application topology, traces, failed transactions, slow transactions, and SQL analysis. This topic describes how to use the SkyWalking Python Agent to enable auto-instrumentation and report application data.

Prerequisites

You have downloaded the Python agent for Apache SkyWalking. We recommend that you use the latest version.
You have added the SkyWalking Python agent to your Python project.
Obtain an endpoint
New console

Log on to the Managed Service for OpenTelemetry console. In the left-side navigation pane, click Integration Center.

On the Integration Center page, click the SkyWalking card in the Open Source Frameworks section.

In the SkyWalking panel, click the Start Integration tab, and then select a region in which you want to report data.

Note
When you access a region for the first time, resources are automatically initialized there.

Configure the Connection Type parameter and copy an endpoint.

If your service is deployed on Alibaba Cloud and resides in the region that you selected, we recommend that you set this parameter to Alibaba Cloud VPC Network. Otherwise, set this parameter to Public Network.

Old console

Log on to the Managed Service for OpenTelemetry console.

In the left-side navigation pane, click Cluster Configurations. On the page that appears, click the Access point information tab.

In the top navigation bar, select a region in which you want to report data. In the Cluster Information section, turn on Show Token.

Set the Client parameter to SkyWalking.

In the Related Information column of the table, copy an endpoint.

Note
If your application is deployed in an Alibaba Cloud production environment, use a VPC endpoint. Otherwise, use a public endpoint.

Background information

SkyWalking is a popular open source application performance monitoring (APM) tool for microservices, cloud-native, and container-based architectures, including Docker, Kubernetes, and Mesos. At its core, SkyWalking is a distributed tracing system.

skywalking-python is the official Python agent library for SkyWalking. You can integrate skywalking-python to monitor Python applications. It supports auto-instrumentation for many third-party libraries, such as Kafka, HTTP, AIOHTTP, Redis, and WebSockets.

Supported third-party libraries

Library	Python version - library version	Plugin name
aiohttp	Python ≥ 3.7 - 3.7.*	sw_aiohttp
aioredis	Python ≥ 3.7 - 2.0.*	sw_aioredis
aiormq	Python ≥ 3.7 - 6.3, 6.4	sw_aiormq
amqp	Python ≥ 3.7 - 2.6.1	sw_amqp
asyncpg	Python ≥ 3.7 - 0.25.0	sw_asyncpg
bottle	Python ≥ 3.7 - 0.12.23	sw_bottle
celery	Python ≥ 3.7 - 5.1	sw_celery
confluent_kafka	Python ≥ 3.7 - 1.5.0, 1.7.0, 1.8.2	sw_confluent_kafka
django	Python ≥ 3.7 - 3.2	sw_django
elasticsearch	Python ≥ 3.7 - 7.13, 7.14, 7.15	sw_elasticsearch
hug	Python ≥ 3.11 - Not supported Python ≥ 3.10 - 2.5, 2.6 Python ≥ 3.7 - 2.4.1, 2.5, 2.6	sw_falcon
fastapi	Python ≥ 3.7 - 0.89., 0.88.	sw_fastapi
flask	Python ≥ 3.7 - 2.0	sw_flask
happybase	Python ≥ 3.7 - 1.2.0	sw_happybase
http_server	Python ≥ 3.7 - *	sw_http_server
werkzeug	Python ≥ 3.7 - 1.0.1, 2.0	sw_http_server
httpx	Python ≥ 3.7 - 0.23., 0.22.	sw_httpx
kafka-python	Python ≥ 3.7 - 2.0	sw_kafka
loguru	Python ≥ 3.7 - 0.6.0, 0.7.0	sw_loguru
mysqlclient	Python ≥ 3.7 - 2.1.*	sw_mysqlclient
neo4j	Python ≥ 3.7 - 5.*	sw_neo4j
psycopg[binary]	Python ≥ 3.11 - 3.1.* Python ≥ 3.7 - 3.0.18, 3.1.*	sw_psycopg
psycopg2-binary	Python ≥ 3.10 - Not supported Python ≥ 3.7 - 2.9	sw_psycopg2
pymongo	Python ≥ 3.7 - 3.11.*	sw_pymongo
pymysql	Python ≥ 3.7 - 1.0	sw_pymysql
pyramid	Python ≥ 3.7 - 1.10, 2.0	sw_pyramid
pika	Python ≥ 3.7 - 1.2	sw_rabbitmq
redis	Python ≥ 3.7 - 3.5.*, 4.5.1	sw_redis
requests	Python ≥ 3.7 - 2.26, 2.25	sw_requests
sanic	Python ≥ 3.10 - Not supported Python ≥ 3.7 - 20.12	sw_sanic
tornado	Python ≥ 3.7 - 6.0, 6.1	sw_tornado
urllib3	Python ≥ 3.7 - 1.26, 1.25	sw_urllib3
urllib_request	Python ≥ 3.7 - *	sw_urllib_request
websockets	Python ≥ 3.7 - 10.3, 10.4	sw_websockets

Sample application

Sample application repository: SkyWalking Demo

This demo is a simple, Flask-based example that forwards requests and interacts with a MySQL database. The SkyWalking agent monitors the application and reports data.

Enable auto-instrumentation for a Python application

You can configure SkyWalking Python Agent parameters in your Python project files or as environment variables.

Configure parameters in code

Modify theconfig.init parameters in your Python project file. In the sample application, the corresponding files are proxy/TestProxy.py and controller/TestController.py.

from skywalking import config
config.init(ConfigurationName = ConfigurationValue)

Configure parameters as environment variables

Add the following content to your environment variable file and then restart your application for the changes to take effect.

export SW_AGENT_ConfigurationName=ConfigurationValue

Note

For Docker container environments, you can configure environment variables under the environment option in the docker-compose.yaml file.

Configure the endpoint and token.
1. Import SkyWalking in your Python file.
```
from skywalking import agent, config
```
2. Configure the endpoint and authentication token.
  
  Replace <endpoint> and <auth-token> with the endpoint and authentication token you obtained in the Prerequisites section.
```
config.init(agent_collector_backend_services='<endpoint>',
            agent_authentication='<auth-token>')
```
Configure a service name as the application identifier.
```
config.init(agent_name='<service name>')
```

Configure the data reporting protocol. The only supported protocol is gRPC.

### The only available reporting protocol is 'grpc'.
config.init(agent_protocol='<protocol>')

Configure other optional parameters as needed. For more information, see the Apache SkyWalking official documentation.
Restart the application.

FAQ

What do I do if the Method not found: skywalking.v3.LogReportService/collect error occurs when reporting data over gRPC?

grpc._channel._InactiveRpcError: &lt;_InactiveRpcError of RPC that terminated with:
    status = StatusCode.UNIMPLEMENTED
    details = &quot;Method not found: skywalking.v3.LogReportService/collect&quot;
    debug_error_string = &quot;UNKNOWN:Error received from peer  {grpc_message:&quot;Method not found: skywalking.v3.LogReportService/collect&quot;, grpc_status:12, created_time:&quot;2023-07-05T15:58:00&quot;}&quot;
&gt;

Set agent_log_reporter_active to False in the config.init call.

config.init(agent_log_reporter_active=False)

What do I do if the Method not found: skywalking.v3.MeterReportService/collect error occurs when reporting data over gRPC?

grpc._channel._InactiveRpcError: &lt;_InactiveRpcError of RPC that terminated with:
        status = StatusCode.UNIMPLEMENTED
        details = &quot;Method not found: skywalking.v3.MeterReportService/collect&quot;
        debug_error_string = &quot;UNKNOWN:Error received from peer  {grpc_message:&quot;Method not found: skywalking.v3.MeterReportService/collect&quot;, grpc_status:12, created_time:&quot;2023-07-05T16:00:00+08:00&quot;}&quot;
&gt;

The console does not support metric data reporting. In the config.init call, set agent_meter_reporter_active to False.

config.init(agent_meter_reporter_active=False)

References

Apache SkyWalking official website