---
title: OpenTracing API
description: The Elastic APM OpenTracing bridge allows to create Elastic APM Transactions and Spans, using the OpenTracing API. In other words, it translates the calls...
url: https://www.elastic.co/docs/reference/apm/agents/ruby/opentracing-api
products:
  - APM Agent
  - APM Ruby Agent
applies_to:
  - Serverless Observability projects: Generally available
  - Elastic Stack: Generally available
  - Application Performance Monitoring Agent for Ruby: Generally available
---

# OpenTracing API
The Elastic APM OpenTracing bridge allows to create Elastic APM `Transactions` and `Spans`, using the OpenTracing API. In other words, it translates the calls to the OpenTracing API to Elastic APM and thus allows for reusing existing instrumentation.
The first span of a service will be converted to an Elastic APM `Transaction`, subsequent spans are mapped to Elastic APM `Span`.

## Operation Modes

This bridge allows for different operation modes in combination with the Elastic APM Agent.
- Noop If no Elastic APM agent is running, the bridge is in noop mode and does not actually record and report spans.
- Mix and Match If you want to leverage the auto instrumentation of Elastic APM, but also want do create custom spans or use the OpenTracing API to add custom tags to the spans created by Elastic APM, you can just do that. The OpenTracing bridge and the standard Elastic APM API interact seamlessly.
- Manual instrumentation If you don’t want Elastic APM to auto-instrument known frameworks, but instead only rely on manual instrumentation, disable the auto instrumentation setting the configuration option [`instrument`](/docs/reference/apm/agents/ruby/configuration#config-instrument) to `false`.


## Getting started

Either `require 'elastic_apm/opentracing'` during the boot of your app or specify the `require:` argument to your `Gemfile`, eg. `gem 'elastic_apm', require: 'elastic_apm/opentracing'`.

## Set Elastic APM as the global tracer

```ruby
::OpenTracing.global_tracer = ElasticAPM::OpenTracing::Tracer.new
```


## Elastic APM specific tags

Elastic APM defines some tags which are not included in the OpenTracing API but are relevant in the context of Elastic APM.
- `type` - sets the type of the transaction, for example `request`, `ext` or `db`
- `user.id` - sets the user id, appears in the "User" tab in the transaction details in the Elastic APM app
- `user.email` - sets the user email, appears in the "User" tab in the transaction details in the Elastic APM app
- `user.username` - sets the user name, appears in the "User" tab in the transaction details in the Elastic APM app
- `result` - sets the result of the transaction. Overrides the default value of `success`. If the `error` tag is set to `true`, the default value is `error`.


## Caveats

Not all features of the OpenTracing API are supported.

### Context propagation

This bridge only supports the format `OpenTracing::FORMAT_RACK`, using HTTP headers with capitalized names, prefixed with `HTTP_` as Rack does it.
`OpenTracing::FORMAT_BINARY` is currently not supported.

### Span References

Currently, this bridge only supports `child_of` references. Other references, like `follows_from` are not supported yet.

### Baggage

The `Span.set_baggage` method is not supported. Baggage items are dropped with a warning log message.

### Logs

Logs are currently not supported.