Automatic Instrumentation is a process of adding tracing capabilities into user application without modyfing its source code. There are several techniques to do that, but all of them more or less work in the same way by injecting additional code into original one during compile time, link time, run-time or by extending the operating system in case of ebpf. This blogpost presents method used by Opentelemetry PHP auto-instrumentation.
Prerequisites To use the PHP auto-instrumentation, you’ll need three things:

OpenTelemetry's platform is an observability framework, offering insights into distributed tracing, metrics collection, and log management for cloud-native applications. Through documentation, tutorials, and community contributions, OpenTelemetry provides insights into instrumenting applications to monitor performance and troubleshoot issues. Developers and DevOps teams can learn about distributed tracing standards, telemetry data formats, and integration with observability tools to gain visibility into complex distributed systems.

OpenTelemetry

Opentelemetry PHP Auto-Instrumentation is a process of adding tracing capabilities into user application without modyfing its source code. The PHP auto-instrumentation uses the Observability API introduced in PHP 8.0. It can be used from user application in order to add additional functionality executed before and after the observed function.

Opentelemetry PHP Auto-Instrumentation

<p>A great approach that should minimalize impact on an interpreted language. Other APM agents for PHP seem to struggle with this.</p>
