Documentation for AppOptics

AppOptics will reach its End of Service Life on November 30, 2025. Migrate to the next generation APM solution before November 30. See FAQ, or contact appopticsng-questions@solarwinds.com for support. Documentation is no longer being updated, and some features or links may not work as described.

Python Agent (legacy) Release Notes

AppOptics agents are no longer receiving updates. The new SolarWinds Observability libraries are regularly updated with new features and improvements. If you are still relying on the AppOptics agents and your components are supported by the new libraries, consider migrating to SolarWinds Observability.

SolarWinds Observability Libraries are not compatible with AppOptics agents. Do not use a mix of SolarWinds Observability Libraries and AppOptics agents to instrument applications that are part of a distributed trace.

5.2.0 - August 25, 2021

Fixed

Tagging of custom metrics

Removed

Support for Python 2.7 and 3.4
Dependency on six (Python 2/3 compatibility) module

5.1.0 - July 8, 2021

Added

Support for instrumentation of AWS Lambda functions
Configuration option to disable agent via the APPOPTICS_AGENT_ENABLED environment variable

5.0.0 - March 3, 2021

Removed

Ability to force tracing by providing keyword argument force to Context.start_trace. This is a breaking change as the signature of Context.start_trace has been modified in a non-backwards compatible way.

Improved

Unit testing structure has been improved to eliminate mocking C-extension functionalities. This is a breaking change since the appoptics_apm_test.py module was removed.
Agent now ships with C-extension version 10.1.0

Fixed

requests instrumentation injects invalid X-Trace into HTTP header
requests instrumentation reports events with invalid edges
Tornado instrumentation incorrectly injects X-Trace into HTTP header when agent is in no-op mode
Tornado instrumentation injects incorrect X-Trace into HTTP header
In Python2.7, agent raises TypeError or UnicodeEncodeError when unicode objects are provided as a value to a info event
end_trace returns incorrect trace ID
WSGI instrumentation creates duplicate edges between reported events
When start_trace is provided with an invalid incoming X-trace, the agent does not report any events related to this request
start_trace raises TypeError when non-string object is provided as xtr parameter
When adding an info event with a non-string object as a key, the agent will report an error event instead of the info event. Non-string objects can now be reported as key (and will be converted to a string when the event is reported).
Agent crashes with message oboe_event_add_info: Assertion 'key' failed when a None object is provided as a key when reporting an info event

Changed

Project license has changed to Apache 2.0 License

4.4.0 - November 12, 2020

Added: appoptics_apm is now providing Python wheels for manylinux2014 compatible platforms
Added: Support for Python 3.9
Added: Custom transaction name can now be set through APPOPTICS_TRANSACTION_NAME environment variable

4.3.1 - September 14, 2020

Fix: Python runtime version is now reported without build information in agent's __Init message, C-extension library version is reported
Fix: Missing logging message on agent startup
Fix: Instrumentation of Django framework under Python 3 and uWSGI breaks depending on the order of import statements. Consult the documentation for most recent instructions on how to instrument Django applications.

4.3.0 - August 31, 2020

Fix: The end_trace SDK function now returns a trace ID with sampling flag set to 00 as expected when tracing is disabled on the service level
Fix: The incorrect multiplication of the SampleRate value reported with the start event has been removed and SampleRate is now reported correctly
Fix: Configuration of tracing_mode through the INI configuration file is now honored
Fix: missing metrics when request of instrumented Django application is not sampled
Changed: Configuration values for tracing_mode have been renamed from always and never, to enabled and disabled, respectively (see Tracing Mode for current values)
Added: Custom transaction filtering to control tracing on a per-request basis (see Custom Transaction Filtering (Tracing Mode per Transaction) for current configuration values)

4.2.0 - July 16, 2020

Upgrade: agent ships with newest C-extension version 10.0.1
Changed: CustomMetrics API functions custom_metrics_increment and custom_metrics_summary now have return values
Changed: CustomMetrics API functions custom_metrics_increment and custom_metrics_summary only accept positive integer for count parameter
Added: Limit maximum RPC request size to 3MB
Added: HTTP proxy support
Added: Support for Alpine Linux 3.9, 3.10, 3.11
Removed: Drop support for the following operating systems (due to upgrade of C-extension):
- CentOS/RHEL 6
- Ubuntu 12.04
- Debian 6, Debian 7
- Amazon Linux 2013.09

4.1.0 - Jun 17, 2020

Added: Python3.8 support
Added: Trace ID injection into log messages
Fix: Missing __Init messages on agent startup
Added: appoptics_apm module now has __version__ attribute according to PEP 396
Fix: Incorrect agent startup behaviour when APPOPTICS_DEBUG_LEVEL is an empty string

4.0.0 - Apr 29, 2020

Added: Python3.7 support
Added: Azure app service support
Added: Support for configurable EC2 metadata timeout
Fix: Renamed async to aosync to support Python3.7
Updated: agent configuration options changed - Consult official documentation for agent configuration options

3.5.9 - May 13, 2019

Added: support for new API token format

3.4.9 - May 03, 2019

Fix: upgrade to oboe 4.0.1 for agent readiness check
Fix: unhandled exception when running inside zip archive
Added: better startup message for unsupported platforms
Added: PID and TID to logs

3.4.8 - Jan 30, 2019

Fix: broken traces caused by http client exceptions

3.4.7 - Dec 14, 2018

Fix: incorrect service creation

3.4.6 - Dec 12, 2018

Fix: agent always wrongly report sample source as local file

3.4.5 - Nov 23, 2018

Added ability to set service key and hostname alias via configuration file
Added ability to disable agent logging and better logging level control. Note APPOPTICS_APM_PYTHON_DISABLE_LOGGER is no longer supported
Fix: middleware generating incorrect URL

3.4.4 - Nov 5, 2018

Added safer processing of Django middleware settings
Added Django 2.1 support
Updated native extension which validates and automatically transformas invalid service names

3.4.3 - Oct 10, 2018

Fix: safer parameter handling
Updated error reporting to conform to spec

3.4.2 - Oct 2, 2018

Added: Agent-side sql sanitization
Fix: Uincode exception processing for python2
Updated native extension with improved network interface detection

3.4.1 - Sep 14, 2018

Fix: DjangoORM should reraise application error
Fix: ensure reporting of transactions for unsampled requests

3.4.0 - Aug 31, 2018

Added ability to install on OS X in no-op mode
Added appoptics_ready SDK call to check agent readiness
Fix: DjangoORM signature mismatch with wrapped method
Updated configuration log for less verbosity

3.3.1 - Aug 13, 2018

Fix: installer error for linux distros without /etc/os-release file
Updated native extension with improved communication with AppOptics server (better host detection and optimized sending of data)

3.3.0 - Aug 13, 2018

Added support for alpine distribution
Fix: thread-safe middleware instrumentation
Fix: avoid custom metrics wrong type or value caused segfault in native extension
Fix: references to old agent logger

3.2.0 - Jul 12, 2018

Fix: custom_metrics_summary, custom_metrics_increment SDK calls. Note this is a breaking change to the SDK API, please see the updated signature for Custom Metrics
Fix: tornado X-trace header missing
Fix: middleware multi-span trace error
Fix: django exit event KV missing

3.1.0 - Jun 7, 2018

Added support for custom transaction naming via the set_transaction_name SDK method

3.0.0 - May 2, 2018

Initial release as appoptics-apm package

2.0.6 - May 2, 2018

Final release to deprecate appoptics package

2.0.5 - Apr 12, 2018

Added Django 1.7 support
Added support for Heroku
Fix: native extension memory leak
Fix: swallows backtraces when Flask is in debug mode

2.0.4 - Mar 14, 2018

Add report Query Flavor KV for mysql
Fix: Avoid segfault related to concurrency in native extension
Fix: redis version [2.4.0, 2.8.0] transaction processing

2.0.3 - Nov 20, 2017

Support hostname alias configuration

2.0.0b6 - Oct 7, 2017

Initial AppOptics Python Agent Release