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n8n → OpenObserve

Capture webhook trigger latency, status codes, and payload metadata for every n8n workflow invocation. n8n is a self-hosted workflow automation platform. Instrumentation wraps n8n webhook calls in manual OpenTelemetry spans, and n8n can also export native workflow traces via OTLP environment variables.

Prerequisites

  • Python 3.8+
  • An OpenObserve account (cloud or self-hosted)
  • Your OpenObserve organisation ID and Base64-encoded auth token
  • A running n8n instance with at least one active webhook workflow

Installation

pip install openobserve-telemetry-sdk opentelemetry-api requests python-dotenv

Configuration

Create a .env file in your project root:

OPENOBSERVE_URL=https://api.openobserve.ai/
OPENOBSERVE_ORG=your_org_id
OPENOBSERVE_AUTH_TOKEN=Basic <your_base64_token>
N8N_BASE_URL=http://localhost:5678
N8N_WEBHOOK_ID=your-webhook-path

To capture native n8n workflow execution traces alongside the manual spans, start n8n with these environment variables:

docker run -p 5678:5678 \
  -e N8N_METRICS=true \
  -e OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=http://host.docker.internal:5080/api/default/v1/traces \
  -e "OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_HEADERS=Authorization=Basic <your_base64_token>" \
  -e OTEL_SERVICE_NAME=n8n \
  n8nio/n8n

Instrumentation

Call openobserve_init() before making API calls. Wrap each webhook trigger in a manual span.

from dotenv import load_dotenv
load_dotenv()

from openobserve import openobserve_init
openobserve_init()

from opentelemetry import trace
import os
import requests

tracer = trace.get_tracer(__name__)

base_url = os.environ.get("N8N_BASE_URL", "http://localhost:5678")
webhook_id = os.environ["N8N_WEBHOOK_ID"]

def trigger_webhook(payload: dict):
    with tracer.start_as_current_span("n8n.webhook_trigger") as span:
        span.set_attribute("n8n.webhook_id", webhook_id)
        span.set_attribute("n8n.payload_keys", str(list(payload.keys())))
        resp = requests.post(
            f"{base_url}/webhook/{webhook_id}",
            headers={"Content-Type": "application/json"},
            json=payload,
            timeout=30,
        )
        span.set_attribute("n8n.status_code", resp.status_code)
        span.set_attribute("span_status", "OK" if resp.ok else "ERROR")
        return resp

result = trigger_webhook({"message": "Explain distributed tracing."})
print(result.status_code, result.text)

What Gets Captured

Attribute Description
n8n_webhook_id The webhook path being triggered
n8n_payload_keys Keys present in the webhook payload
n8n_status_code HTTP status code from n8n (200 on success)
span_status OK or error status
error_message Error detail on connection failures
duration Webhook trigger latency

Viewing Traces

  1. Log in to OpenObserve and navigate to Traces
  2. Filter by span name n8n.webhook_trigger to see all webhook calls
  3. Filter by n8n_status_code to find non-200 responses
  4. Filter by span_status ERROR to find failed triggers

n8n traces in OpenObserve

Next Steps

With n8n instrumented, every webhook trigger is recorded in OpenObserve. From here you can monitor trigger latency, track which webhooks are called most often, and set alerts on failed workflow invocations.

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