Documentation forSolarWinds Observability SaaS

Add a PHP service

The PHP Library provides automatic tracing and metrics for PHP applications without additional code modification. For new features, fixed issues, and updated components, see the PHP Library release notes.

The PHP Library supports out-of-the-box tracing for standard PHP applications. This includes support for popular frameworks that many ecommerce and CMS tools use, like WordPress or Magento. PHP-based sites that do not use Laravel may not benefit from the Laravel framework-specific insights, such as spans.

Get started

Before you start

Verify the following to ensure the library can collect and transmit data:

  • The platform where your APM library will be installed is supported.

  • Your application components are supported by the library.

  • Your firewall configuration permits TCP/HTTPS/TLS outbound connections to otel.collector.xx-yy.cloud.solarwinds.com (or apm.collector.xx-yy.cloud.solarwinds.com when using legacy mode) port 443, where xx-yy is determined by the URL you use to access SolarWinds Observability SaaS, described in Data centers and endpoint URIs. See Firewall or access control requirements.

    If your firewall or access control requirements do not allow such connections, configure the library to send data through a proxy.

Remove other APM libraries from your PHP installation before using the SolarWinds Observability PHP Library. See Do you have more than one APM extension installed?.

The SolarWinds Observability PHP Library is a PHP extension called solarwinds-apm. The PHP Library instruments applications based on the PHP language, covering a variety of popular frameworks and libraries. See Components supported by the PHP Library.

To enable instrumentation for a PHP application and send the data to SolarWinds Observability SaaS:

  1. In SolarWinds Observability SaaS, click Add Data at the top.

  2. In the Add Data dialog Intro, click Monitor my application performance.

  3. Click PHP.

  4. Type a name for your service and select the environment (self-managed Linux ). Click Next.

  5. Create or select an API Ingestion token to use when sending your collected entity type data by doing either of the following:

    • Select Generate New Token and enter an Ingestion Token Name, and then click Next.
    • Select Use Existing Token and select an ingestion token from the list, and then click Next.

  6. Download and install the PHP Library on the host system and configure the Service key and correct ingestion endpoint during installation. Use the Service key shown in the Add Data dialog.

  7. Restart your web server or PHP process to load the library and start reporting data to the SolarWinds APM collector

  8. Wait for the PHP Library to successfully connect to the SolarWinds APM collector and for the Waiting for Connection button in SolarWinds Observability SaaS to change to OK.

  9. Click OK to finish setting up the service.

    To view data collected for the newly configured entity in the Entity Explorer, click the name of the entity type in the confirmation dialog in the lower-left corner. It may take a few seconds for data to appear for the newly created entity. See Entity Explorer for details.

    For transaction and trace data to appear in the Entity Explorer and Traces Explorer, your service must be running and in use.

To tailor the installed library to your monitoring needs, see Configure the PHP Library.

Custom instrumentation

Custom instrumentation can be used to get extra application-specific visibility, adding both custom spans for distributed tracing and custom timers/counters for metric reporting and alerting. Check out the SDK.