Docs » Supported integrations in Splunk Observability Cloud » Instrument back-end applications to send spans to Splunk APM » Instrument PHP applications for Splunk Observability Cloud » SignalFx Tracing Library for PHP (deprecated) » Instrument your PHP application for Splunk Observability Cloud (deprecated)

Caution

The SignalFx Tracing Library for PHP is deprecated as of February 21, 2024 and will reach End of Support (EOS) on February 21 2025. Until then, only critical security fixes and bug fixes will be provided. After the EOS date, the library will be archived and no longer maintained.

If you want to instrument new or existing PHP applications, use OpenTelemetry PHP instrumentation, which offers similar functionalities.

Instrument your PHP application for Splunk Observability Cloud (deprecated) 🔗

The SignalFx Tracing Library for PHP automatically instruments PHP applications.

To get started, use the guided setup or follow the instructions manually.

Generate customized instructions using the guided setup 🔗

To generate all the basic installation commands for your environment and application, use the PHP guided setup. To access the PHP guided setup, follow these steps:

  1. Log in to Splunk Observability Cloud.

  2. Open the PHP guided setup . Optionally, you can navigate to the guided setup on your own:

    1. In the navigation menu, select Data Management.

    2. Select Add Integration to open the Integrate Your Data page.

    3. In the integration filter menu, select By Product.

    4. Select the APM product.

    5. Select the PHP tile to open the PHP guided setup.

Install the SignalFx Tracing Library for PHP manually 🔗

If you don’t use the guided setup, follow these instructions to manually install the SignalFx Tracing Library for PHP:

  1. Instrument your PHP application

  2. Deploy the PHP instrumentation in your environment

  3. Configure the PHP instrumentation for Splunk Observability Cloud

Instrument your PHP application 🔗

Follow these steps to automatically instrument your application:

  1. Check that you meet the requirements. See PHP instrumentation compatibility and requirements (deprecated).

  2. Download the installation script from the following location:

    curl -LO  https://github.com/signalfx/signalfx-php-tracing/releases/latest/download/signalfx-setup.php

  3. Install by running the installation script:

    php signalfx-setup.php --php-bin=all

    Note

    If you omit the --php-bin option, you can interactively select the PHP installation.

  4. Set the following environment variables:

    # Add the following lines to your Apache configuration file

SetEnv SIGNALFX_SERVICE_NAME="<my-service-name>"
SetEnv SIGNALFX_ENDPOINT_URL='http://localhost:9080/v1/trace'
SetEnv SIGNALFX_TRACE_GLOBAL_TAGS="deployment.environment:<my_environment>"

  5. Restart your server.

Next, deploy the PHP instrumentation in your environment. See Deploy the PHP instrumentation in your environment for more information.

Note

If you need to add custom attributes to spans or want to manually generate spans, instrument your PHP application or service manually. See Manually instrument PHP applications for Splunk Observability Cloud.

INI file settings 🔗

If you don’t set any environment variable, the library extracts default values from the INI file. The prefix for settings defined using environment variables that start with SIGNALFX_TRACE_ is signalfx.trace.. For all other environment variables that start with SIGNALFX_ the prefix is signalfx..

You can use the signalfx-setup.php script to set INI file options without having to manually locate each file. For example:

php signalfx-setup.php --update-config --signalfx.endpoint_url=http://172.17.0.1:9080/v1/trace

This is useful for options common to all PHP services running in the system, like endpoints.

Deploy the PHP instrumentation in your environment 🔗

You can deploy the PHP instrumentation in Docker or, Kubernetes, or you can send data directly to Splunk Observability Cloud. See the following sections for instructions for your environment:

Deploy the PHP instrumentation in Docker 🔗

You can deploy the PHP instrumentation using Docker. Follow these steps to get started:

  1. Create a startup shell script in a location Docker can access. The script can have any name, for example setup.sh.

  2. Edit the startup shell script to export the environment variables described in Instrument your PHP application.

  3. Add the following commands to the startup shell script to initialize the PHP instrumentation:

    curl -LO https://github.com/signalfx/signalfx-php-tracing/releases/latest/download/signalfx-setup.php
php signalfx-setup.php --php-bin=all
php signalfx-setup.php --update-config --signalfx.endpoint_url=https://ingest.<realm>.signalfx.com/v2/trace/signalfxv1
php signalfx-setup.php --update-config --signalfx.access_token=<access_token>
php signalfx-setup.php --update-config --signalfx.service_name=<service-name>

  4. Add a line to the script to start the application using the supervisorctl, supervisord, systemd, or a similar command. The following example uses supervisorctl:

    supervisor start my-php-app

  5. Add a command to run the newly created shell script at the end of the Dockerfile.

  6. Rebuild the container using the docker build command.

Next, configure the PHP instrumentation for Splunk Observability Cloud. See Configure the PHP instrumentation for Splunk Observability Cloud.

Caution

Make sure to deactivate the Xdebug extension, as it’s not compatible with the PHP instrumentation.

Deploy the PHP instrumentation in Kubernetes 🔗

To deploy the PHP instrumentation in Kubernetes, configure the Kubernetes Downward API to expose environment variables to Kubernetes resources.

The following example shows how to update a deployment to expose environment variables by adding the agent configuration under the .spec.template.spec.containers.env section:

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: my-deployment
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: your-application
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: your-application
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: myapp
        image: <image-name>
        env:
          - name: HOST_IP
            valueFrom:
              fieldRef:
                fieldPath: status.hostIP
          - name: SIGNALFX_SERVICE_NAME
            value: "<service-name>"
          - name: SIGNALFX_ENDPOINT_URL
            value: "http://$(HOST_IP):9411/api/v2/spans"
          - name: SIGNALFX_TRACE_GLOBAL_TAGS
            value: "deployment.environment:<my_environment>"

Next, configure the PHP instrumentation for Splunk Observability Cloud. See Configure the PHP instrumentation for Splunk Observability Cloud.

Send data directly to Splunk Observability Cloud 🔗

By default, all telemetry is sent to the local instance of the Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector.

To bypass the OTel Collector and send data directly to Splunk Observability Cloud, set the following environment variables:

SetEnv SIGNALFX_ACCESS_TOKEN=<access_token>
SetEnv SIGNALFX_ENDPOINT_URL=https://ingest.<realm>.signalfx.com/v2/trace/signalfxv1

To override the host used by the agent, use the environment variable OTEL_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTES to set your host’s name to the desired source:

export OTEL_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTES=host.name=<host_name>

To obtain an access token, see Retrieve and manage user API access tokens using Splunk Observability Cloud.

To find your Splunk realm, see Note about realms.

Next, configure the PHP instrumentation for Splunk Observability Cloud. See Configure the PHP instrumentation for Splunk Observability Cloud for more information.

Note

For more information on the ingest API endpoints, see Send APM traces .