Setup External API Monitoring

Overview

External API Monitoring works automatically with properly instrumented applications. This document explains the requirements needed for this feature to work.

Setup

To enable API monitoring, make sure that your application is instrumented correctly. For details about instrumenting application for your language/framework, please refer this document.

For every external call, spans must include the below attributes:

• net.peer.name
• http.url
• http.target

These span attributes are used to automatically derive API calls.

Verification

To verify that your instrumentation is correctly configured:

1. Generate some traffic that includes external API calls
2. Navigate to the External API Monitoring section in SigNoz
3. Check if your external domains appear in the list

Troubleshooting

If your external API domains/endpoints aren't appearing in the monitoring interface:

• Check that your service is properly instrumented and sending traces to SigNoz
• Verify that your HTTP client libraries are being instrumented
• For manual instrumentation, ensure you're adding all required attributes
• If you're using OpenTelemetry collector, review its configuration to ensure it's forwarding all attributes

Next Steps

Once your application is properly instrumented, head to the Overview section to learn how to use External API Monitoring to gain insights into your external API dependencies.