PHP

PHP auto-instrumentation has two parts: the opentelemetry PHP extension, which hooks into function calls, and Composer packages that use those hooks for Laravel, Symfony, Slim, PDO, Guzzle, PSR-18 clients and more. You don’t change your code.

Use this page when you run a PHP application (Laravel, Symfony, WordPress or plain PHP) and want it in FuseScope.

Signal	Status	What is sent
Traces	Stable	Spans for requests, HTTP calls, database queries.
Metrics	Stable	What your code records through the API.
Logs	Stable	PSR-3 logger records (Monolog, Laravel) with trace IDs.

Prerequisites

PHP 8.1 or later (the extension supports 8.0, current SDK packages need 8.1).
Composer, with your app using its autoloader (vendor/autoload.php).
To build the extension from source: gcc, make and autoconf.
A FuseScope collector you can reach on port 4317 or 4318. See OTLP.

Install

Install the extension, with one of:

pecl install opentelemetry
# or, with PIE
pie install open-telemetry/ext-opentelemetry
# or, in Docker images with docker-php-extension-installer
install-php-extensions opentelemetry

Enable it in php.ini (PIE and install-php-extensions do this for you):
php.ini
```
[opentelemetry]
extension=opentelemetry
```
Check it loads with php --ri opentelemetry.
Add the SDK, the OTLP exporter, an HTTP client for the exporter, and the instrumentation for your framework and libraries:
Terminal window
```
composer require \
  open-telemetry/sdk \
  open-telemetry/exporter-otlp \
  php-http/guzzle7-adapter \
  open-telemetry/opentelemetry-auto-laravel \
  open-telemetry/opentelemetry-auto-pdo \
  open-telemetry/opentelemetry-auto-guzzle
```
Swap auto-laravel for auto-symfony, auto-slim, auto-wordpress and so on. Each package is listed in the OpenTelemetry registry.

Configure and run

export OTEL_PHP_AUTOLOAD_ENABLED=true
export OTEL_SERVICE_NAME=checkout
export OTEL_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTES=deployment.environment.name=production,service.version=1.4.2
export OTEL_TRACES_EXPORTER=otlp
export OTEL_METRICS_EXPORTER=otlp
export OTEL_LOGS_EXPORTER=otlp
export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=http://fusescope-collector.example.com:4318
export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_PROTOCOL=http/protobuf
export OTEL_PROPAGATORS=baggage,tracecontext
php -S localhost:8080 -t public

OTEL_PHP_AUTOLOAD_ENABLED=true makes the SDK start itself from vendor/autoload.php. Without it, nothing is sent.

Another option on Linux is the PHP distro: deb, rpm and apk packages with production defaults, installed without Composer.

Send to FuseScope

gRPC needs the grpc extension and a transport package:

pecl install grpc
composer require open-telemetry/transport-grpc

OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=http://fusescope-collector.example.com:4317
OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_PROTOCOL=grpc

The grpc extension takes a long time to compile. HTTP is usually simpler.

OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=http://fusescope-collector.example.com:4318
OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_PROTOCOL=http/protobuf

Behind the chart ingress, use https://otlp.example.com. See from outside the cluster.

OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=http://localhost:4318
OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_PROTOCOL=http/protobuf

A local collector also keeps export off the request path: PHP sends at the end of each request, so a nearby collector answers faster. Run it with Docker, on a VM or in Kubernetes.

Docker

This example installs the extension with install-php-extensions from mlocati/docker-php-extension-installer, which also enables it:

FROM php:8.3-apache
COPY --from=mlocati/php-extension-installer /usr/bin/install-php-extensions /usr/local/bin/
RUN install-php-extensions opentelemetry zip
COPY --from=composer:2 /usr/bin/composer /usr/bin/composer
WORKDIR /var/www/html
COPY composer.json composer.lock ./
RUN composer install --no-dev --no-scripts --no-autoloader
COPY . .
RUN composer dump-autoload --optimize

docker run -p 8080:80 \
  -e OTEL_PHP_AUTOLOAD_ENABLED=true \
  -e OTEL_SERVICE_NAME=checkout \
  -e OTEL_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTES=deployment.environment.name=production \
  -e OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=http://fusescope-collector.example.com:4318 \
  -e OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_PROTOCOL=http/protobuf \
  checkout:latest

With a php:*-fpm image, apply the PHP-FPM caution above.

Kubernetes

Set the variables in the pod spec. The downward API adds the pod name and namespace:

env:
  - name: OTEL_PHP_AUTOLOAD_ENABLED
    value: "true"
  - name: OTEL_SERVICE_NAME
    value: checkout
  - name: OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT
    value: http://fusescope-otel-collector.fusescope.svc.cluster.local:4318
  - name: OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_PROTOCOL
    value: http/protobuf
  - name: K8S_POD_NAME
    valueFrom:
      fieldRef:
        fieldPath: metadata.name
  - name: K8S_NAMESPACE_NAME
    valueFrom:
      fieldRef:
        fieldPath: metadata.namespace
  - name: OTEL_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTES
    value: deployment.environment.name=production,k8s.pod.name=$(K8S_POD_NAME),k8s.namespace.name=$(K8S_NAMESPACE_NAME)

$(VAR) only expands variables defined earlier in the list, so keep OTEL_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTES last.

Logs

Any PSR-3 logger, which includes Monolog and the Laravel and Symfony loggers, can be captured by the PSR-3 instrumentation:

composer require open-telemetry/opentelemetry-auto-psr3

`OTEL_PHP_PSR3_MODE`	Effect
`inject`	Adds `trace_id` and `span_id` to each record’s context, for your own log output.
`export`	Also exports each record over OTLP (needs `OTEL_LOGS_EXPORTER=otlp`).

The PSR-3 package is still 0.x. To attach OpenTelemetry to Monolog yourself instead, add the handler from open-telemetry/opentelemetry-logger-monolog. If a collector already reads your log files or stdout, use inject so each line is stored once.

Check that data arrives

Send a few requests to the application.
Open Services. The service appears under its OTEL_SERVICE_NAME within a minute.
Open the Traces explorer and filter by service.name.

Nothing arrives? Check that the extension is loaded where requests run (phpinfo() lists opentelemetry; the CLI and PHP-FPM can use different php.ini files), that OTEL_PHP_AUTOLOAD_ENABLED=true reaches PHP (print getenv('OTEL_PHP_AUTOLOAD_ENABLED')), and that an HTTP client such as php-http/guzzle7-adapter is installed.