---
title: Go
metaTitle: "Go Distributed Tracing - OpenTelemetry Golang APM"
description: Complete Go/Golang distributed tracing guide using OpenTelemetry SDK for Go application performance monitoring and trace instrumentation.
---

# Go (Golang) Distributed Tracing - OpenTelemetry APM

Setup distributed tracing for your Go application using OpenTelemetry for Go application performance monitoring (APM) and trace ingestion. Check sample configuration on how to setup OpenTelemetry traces for Golang applications.

## Clone 

```

git clone https://github.com/openobserve/sample-tracing-golang

```

If you don't have Go installed, please install it and then follow below steps.

Open `pkg/tel/otel_helper_http.go` file from that repository. and make changes to the highlighted lines below
```go lineNumbers {29,38,36}

package tel

import (
	"context"
	"fmt"
	"os"

	"go.opentelemetry.io/otel"
	"go.opentelemetry.io/otel/attribute"
	"go.opentelemetry.io/otel/exporters/otlp/otlptrace/otlptracehttp"
	"go.opentelemetry.io/otel/propagation"
	"go.opentelemetry.io/otel/sdk/resource"
	sdktrace "go.opentelemetry.io/otel/sdk/trace"
	semconv "go.opentelemetry.io/otel/semconv/v1.4.0"
)

func InitTracerHTTP() *sdktrace.TracerProvider {
	otel.SetTextMapPropagator(propagation.NewCompositeTextMapPropagator(
		propagation.TraceContext{},
		propagation.Baggage{},
	))

	OTEL_OTLP_HTTP_ENDPOINT := os.Getenv("OTEL_OTLP_HTTP_ENDPOINT")

	if OTEL_OTLP_HTTP_ENDPOINT == "" {
		OTEL_OTLP_HTTP_ENDPOINT = "<host>:<port>" //without trailing slash
	}

	OTEL_OTLP_HTTP_ENDPOINT = "api.openobserve.ai"

	otlptracehttp.NewClient()

	otlpHTTPExporter, err := otlptracehttp.New(context.TODO(),
		// otlptracehttp.WithInsecure(), // use http & not https
		otlptracehttp.WithEndpoint(OTEL_OTLP_HTTP_ENDPOINT),
		otlptracehttp.WithURLPath("/api/default/v1/traces"),
		otlptracehttp.WithHeaders(map[string]string{
			"Authorization": "Authorization",
		}),
	)

	if err != nil {
		fmt.Println("Error creating HTTP OTLP exporter: ", err)
	}

	res := resource.NewWithAttributes(
		semconv.SchemaURL,
		// the service name used to display traces in backends
		semconv.ServiceNameKey.String("otel1-gin-gonic"),
		semconv.ServiceVersionKey.String("0.0.1"),
		attribute.String("environment", "test"),
	)

	tp := sdktrace.NewTracerProvider(
		sdktrace.WithSampler(sdktrace.AlwaysSample()),
		sdktrace.WithResource(res),
		sdktrace.WithBatcher(otlpHTTPExporter),
		// sdktrace.WithBatcher(stdExporter),
	)
	otel.SetTracerProvider(tp)

	return tp
}

```
## Setup up credentials 

- You will get `url` and `Authorization` key from the [trace ingestion settings](https://cloud.openobserve.ai/web/ingestion/custom/traces/).
- Replace the `url` and `Authorization` key in the `pkg/tel/otel_helper_http.go` file.

## Setup Service/Application 
Follow the steps given in the sample-tracing-golang readme and then start server
```
go run .
```
The server is now running, navigate to [http://localhost:8080/](http://localhost:8080/)

Refresh page couple of times to get more traces exported.

![Traces Sample Configration](./images/go_app.png)



Traces are captured, you can check these captured traces in the [Traces view](https://cloud.openobserve.ai/web/traces).


![Traces Page](./images/traces_go.png)

Filter traces with your service name `otel1-gin-gonic`

![Filter traces with service name](./images/filter_traces_go.png)

Click on any trace to check trace data

![Trace details](./images/trace_details_1.png)

Trace can have multiple spans, each span represents single operation or task within that trace. Click on any span to check span details.

![Trace details](./images/trace_details_2.png)