python-zipkin

python-zipkin is an api for recording and sending messages to Zipkin. Why use it? From the http://twitter.github.io/zipkin/:

"Collecting traces helps developers gain deeper knowledge about how certain requests perform in a distributed system. Let's say we're having problems with user requests timing out. We can look up traced requests that timed out and display it in the web UI. We'll be able to quickly find the service responsible for adding the unexpected response time. If the service has been annotated adequately we can also find out where in that service the issue is happening."

Supported versions

Python: 2.6, 2.7 (the current Python Thrift release doesn't support Python 3)

Recording annotations

python-zipkin creates a single span per served requests. It automatically adds a number of annotations (see below). You can also add your own annotations from anywhere in your code:

from zipkin.api import api as zipkin_api

zipkin_api.record_event('MySQL: "SELECT * FROM auth_users"', duration=15000)  # Note duration is in microseconds, as defined by Zipkin
zipkin_api.record_key_value('Cache misses', 15)  # You can use string, int, long and bool values

Hacking

See CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.

You can start hacking on python-zipkin with:

git clone https://github.com/prezi/python-zipkin.git
cd python-zipkin
git remote rename origin upstream
virtualenv virtualenv
. virtualenv/bin/activate
python setup.py test