Custom Instrumentation

The following example creates a transaction for a scope that contains an expensive operation (for example, process_item), and sends the result to Sentry:

# start a transaction
transaction = Sentry.start_transaction(op: "process_item")

# perform the operation
process_item(args)

# finish the transaction, which will send it to Sentry automatically
transaction.finish

Add More Spans to the Transaction

The next example contains the implementation of the hypothetical process_item function called from the code snippet in the previous section. Our SDK can determine if there is currently an open transaction and add all newly created spans as child operations to that transaction. Keep in mind that each individual span also needs to be manually finished; otherwise, spans will not show up in the transaction. When using spans and transactions as context managers, they are automatically finished at the end of the with block.

In cases where you want to attach Spans to an already ongoing Transaction you can use Sentry.get_current_scope.get_transaction. This property will return a Transaction in case there is a running Transaction otherwise it returns None.

Alternatively, instead of adding to the top-level transaction, you can make a child span of the current span, if there is one. Use Sentry.get_current_scope.get_span in that case.

You can choose the value of op and description.

class OrdersController < ApplicationController
  def create
    order = Order.new
    # get the root transaction, which is usually the request's transaction
    transaction = Sentry.get_current_scope.get_transaction
    # start a span under the root transaction
    span = transaction.start_child(op: :process_items, description: "process order's items")
    span.set_data(:key, "value")

    order.process_items(params)

    # finish the span to record its finished time
    # keep in mind that finishing span doesn't send it to Sentry
    # it will be sent with the root transaction when it's finished
    span.finish
  end
end

Alternatively, you can use the with_child_span method:

class OrdersController < ApplicationController
  def create
    order = Order.new
    transaction = Sentry.get_current_scope.get_transaction
    transaction.with_child_span(op: :process_items, description: "process order's items") do |span|
      span.set_data(:key, "value")
      order.process_items(params)
    end # the child span ends with the block
  end
end

Retrieve a Transaction

In cases where you want to attach Spans to an already ongoing Transaction you can use Sentry.get_current_scope.get_transaction. This property will return a Transaction in case there is a running Transaction otherwise it returns None.

transaction = Sentry.get_current_scope.get_transaction || Sentry.start_transaction(name: "task")

span = transaction.start_child(op: "operation")
# perform the operation

Retrieve the Current Span

Started spans are stored in the scope, and can be fetched off the scope:

span = Sentry.get_current_scope.get_span