Transaction Payloads

Transactions are used to send tracing events to Sentry.

Transactions must be wrapped in an Envelope and therefore also be sent to the Envelope endpoint.

Anatomy

A Transaction is basically a Span combined with an Event. When using tracing with our SDKs you usually create a Span tree, the root node and therefore the whole tree is considered to be the Transaction. So technically a Transaction is just a Span. A Transaction must also have a contexts.trace (which contains some data of the Span) and some other properties that will be covered in the next section.

Transactions are Events enriched with Span data. We are only going to list here what is important for a Transaction.

event_id
Required. Hexadecimal string representing a uuid4 value. The length is exactly 32 characters. Dashes are not allowed. Has to be lowercase.

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{
  "event_id": "fc6d8c0c43fc4630ad850ee518f1b9d0"
}

tags
Optional. A map or list of tags for this event. Each tag must be less than 200 characters.

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{
  "tags": {
    "ios_version": "4.0",
    "context": "production"
  }
}

trace_id:
Required. Determines which trace the Span belongs to. The value should be 16 random bytes encoded as a hex string (32 characters long).

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{
  "trace_id": "1e57b752bc6e4544bbaa246cd1d05dee"
}

contexts.trace

A Transaction has to have a specific contexts.trace entry that contains data from the Span.

op
Recommended. Short code identifying the type of operation the span is measuring.

For more details, see Sentry's conventions around span operations.

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{
  "op": "db.query"
}

description
Optional. Longer description of the span's operation, which uniquely identifies the span but is consistent across instances of the span.

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{
  "description": "SELECT * FROM users WHERE last_active < DATE_SUB(CURRENT_DATE, INTERVAL 1 YEAR)`"
}

start_timestamp
Required. A timestamp representing when the measuring started. The format is either a string as defined in RFC 3339 or a numeric (integer or float) value representing the number of seconds that have elapsed since the Unix epoch. The start_timestamp value must be less than or equal to the timestamp value, otherwise the Span is discarded as invalid.

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{
  "start_timestamp": "2011-05-02T17:41:36.242Z"
}

or:

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{
  "start_timestamp": 1304358096.242
}

timestamp
Required. A timestamp representing when the measuring finished. The format is either a string as defined in RFC 3339 or a numeric (integer or float) value representing the number of seconds that have elapsed since the Unix epoch.

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{
  "timestamp": "2011-05-02T17:41:36.955Z"
}

or:

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{
  "timestamp": 1304358096.955
}

status
Optional. Describes the status of the Span/Transaction.

StateDescriptionHTTP status code equivalent
okNot an error, returned on success200 and 2XX HTTP statuses
cancelledThe operation was cancelled, typically by the caller499
unknown or unknown_errorAn unknown error raised by APIs that don't return enough error information500
invalid_argumentThe client specified an invalid argument400
deadline_exceededThe deadline expired before the operation could succeed504
not_foundContent was not found or request was denied for an entire class of users404
already_existsThe entity attempted to be created already exists409
permission_deniedThe caller doesn't have permission to execute the specified operation403
resource_exhaustedThe resource has been exhausted e.g. per-user quota exhausted, file system out of space429
failed_preconditionThe client shouldn't retry until the system state has been explicitly handled400
abortedThe operation was aborted409
out_of_rangeThe operation was attempted past the valid range e.g. seeking past the end of a file400
unimplementedThe operation is not implemented or is not supported/enabled for this operation501
internal_errorSome invariants expected by the underlying system have been broken. This code is reserved for serious errors500
unavailableThe service is currently available e.g. as a transient condition503
data_lossUnrecoverable data loss or corruption500
unauthenticatedThe requester doesn't have valid authentication credentials for the operation401
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{
  "status": "ok"
}

tags
Optional. A map or list of tags for this event. Each tag must be less than 200 characters.

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{
  "tags": {
    "ios_version": "4.0",
    "context": "production"
  }
}

Examples

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{
  "contexts": {
    "trace": {
      "op": "navigation",
      "description": "User clicked on <Link />",
      "trace_id": "743ad8bbfdd84e99bc38b4729e2864de",
      "span_id": "a0cfbde2bdff3adc",
      "status": "ok",
      "parent_span_id": "99659d76b7cdae94"
    }
  }
}

spans
Recommended. A list of Spans.

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{
  "spans": [
    {
      "start_timestamp": 1588601261.481961,
      "description": "GET /sockjs-node/info",
      "tags": {
        "http.status_code": "200"
      },
      "timestamp": 1588601261.488901,
      "parent_span_id": "b0e6f15b45c36b12",
      "trace_id": "1e57b752bc6e4544bbaa246cd1d05dee",
      "op": "http",
      "data": {
        "url": "http://localhost:8080/sockjs-node/info?t=1588601703755",
        "status_code": 200,
        "type": "xhr",
        "method": "GET"
      },
      "span_id": "b01b9f6349558cd1"
    },
    {
      "start_timestamp": 1588601261.535386,
      "description": "Vue <App>",
      "timestamp": 1588601261.544196,
      "parent_span_id": "9312d0d18bf51736",
      "trace_id": "1e57b752bc6e4544bbaa246cd1d05dee",
      "op": "update",
      "span_id": "b980d4dec78d7344"
    }
  ]
}

measurements
Optional. An object containing standard/custom measurements with keys signifying the name of the measurement.

Standard measurement keys currently supported are from the following list taken from here.

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[
  // web
  "fp",
  "fcp",
  "lcp",
  "fid",
  "cls",
  "ttfb",
  "ttfb.requesttime",
  // mobile
  "app_start_cold",
  "app_start_warm",
  "frames_total",
  "frames_slow",
  "frames_frozen",
  // react native
  "stall_count",
  "stall_total_time",
  "stall_longest_time"
]

For the well-known measurements listed above, Sentry automatically infers units. Custom measurements need units to be specified, defaulting to "none" if missing. The full list of supported units is specified on Relay's MetricUnit. Sentry's event ingestion supports arbitrary custom units, but many SDKs will not expose a generic user-defined unit interface.

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{
  "measurements": {
    "lcp": { "value": 100 },
    "fp": { "value": 123 },
    "my.custom.metric": { "value": 456, "unit": "millisecond" }
  }
}

Transaction Annotations

transaction_info
Recommended. Additional information about the name of the transaction.

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{
  "transaction_info": {
    "source": "url"
  }
}

transaction_info.source
Required. This information is required by dynamic sampling. Contains information about how the name of the transaction was determined. This will be used by the server to decide whether or not to scrub identifiers from the transaction name, or replace the entire name with a placeholder. The source should only be set by integrations and not by developers directly.

SourceDescription
Examples
customUser-defined name, see setTransactionName()my_transaction
urlRaw URL, potentially containing identifiers./auth/login/john123/
GET /auth/login/john123/
routeParametrized URL / route/auth/login/:userId/
GET /auth/login/{user}/
viewName of the view handling the request.UserListView
componentNamed after a software component, such as a function or class name.AuthLogin.login
LoginActivity.login_button
taskName of a background task (e.g. a Celery task)sentry.tasks.do_something
unknownValue set by Relay for legacy SDKs. SDKs must not set this value explicitly.
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