otel_go_router

OpenTelemetry instrumentation for package:go_router — the Flutter team's recommended router — built on the Dartastic OpenTelemetry SDK.

Add one NavigatorObserver and every route transition emits a short span with navigation.* attributes, turning your tracing backend's trace view into a user-journey timeline.

final router = GoRouter(
  observers: [OTelGoRouterObserver()],
  routes: [...],
);

Works with any router that drives a Flutter Navigator — auto_route, beamer, vanilla MaterialApp / Navigator.push all use the same NavigatorObserver API. The package is named after go_router because that's the highest-leverage target, but the integration is router-agnostic.

Why

Routes are the natural anchor for "user journey" traces. Every HTTP, DB, or state-change span produced while a route is active is, conceptually, part of that route's user-visible work. Even without context-propagating a long-lived route span (which the MVP does NOT do — see Caveats), having one event span per route transition gives you:

• A timeline of how the user moved through the app, queryable in your tracing backend by navigation.route.path / navigation.action.
• A correlation handle (transition timestamp) for joining navigation events with other telemetry.
• A foundation for proposing a navigation.* semantic convention to the OTel client-side SIG.

Span shape

Attribute	Source	When set
navigation.action	push / pop / replace / remove	every span
navigation.route.path	Route.settings.name	when present
navigation.previous_route_path	previousRoute.settings.name	when present
navigation.is_initial_route	true	only on the very first push
navigation.route.arguments	Route.settings.arguments.toString() (clipped)	only when recordArguments: true

• Span name is route.<action>:<path> by default (e.g. route.push:/users/:id). Override via spanNameBuilder if you need a different scheme.
• Span kind is the default (INTERNAL).
• Span status is always unset — navigation isn't a success / failure event in itself.

Low-cardinality span names: free with go_router

package:go_router populates Route.settings.name with the matched pattern (/users/:id), not the resolved URL (/users/42), so span names are automatically low-cardinality when you use this package with go_router.

With other routers (vanilla Navigator.push, auto_route, …) settings.name is whatever the caller passed. If you see high-cardinality span names like /users/42, override spanNameBuilder to strip dynamic segments.

Wiring per go_router's route API

GoRouter(observers: ...) attaches the observer to the root navigator only. go_router builds a separate navigator for every ShellRoute / StatefulShellBranch, and a NavigatorObserver only sees the navigator it is attached to — so navigation inside a shell is invisible to a root-only observer. Attach an observer at each level you want observed:

final router = GoRouter(
  observers: [OTelGoRouterObserver()], // root navigator
  routes: [
    ShellRoute(
      observers: [OTelGoRouterObserver()], // this shell's navigator
      builder: ...,
      routes: [...],
    ),
    StatefulShellRoute.indexedStack(
      branches: [
        StatefulShellBranch(
          observers: [OTelGoRouterObserver()], // per-branch navigator
          routes: [...],
        ),
        ...
      ],
      builder: ...,
    ),
  ],
);

New instances per navigator are fine — they all emit through the same tracer. One caveat has no observer-based fix: switching the active branch of a StatefulShellRoute (tab-style navigation) does not push or pop any route on any navigator, so no NavigatorObserver fires. If tab switches must be recorded, emit a span from your shell's branch-change callback (the navigationShell.goBranch call site) — or, for auto_route apps, use otel_auto_route, whose AutoRouterObserver receives tab events natively.

Configuration

Constructor arg	Default	Effect
tracer	OTel.tracerProvider().getTracer('otel_go_router')	The tracer that emits the spans.
spanNameBuilder	(t, r) => 'route.$t:${r.settings.name}'	Override the default span name.
recordArguments	false	When true, record Route.settings.arguments.toString(). Off by default because arguments often carry user data.
argumentAttributeMaxLength	256	Cap on the arguments attribute. Longer strings get clipped with ….

Caveats

• The observer calls OTel.tracerProvider().getTracer(...) in its constructor — OTel.initialize() must run before the observer is created.
• No long-lived "route active" span yet. Each transition is a short event span; child spans (HTTP requests, provider events, etc.) emitted during a route's lifetime are not automatically parented to that route. A future v0.2 may add an opt-in context-management primitive ("every span produced while this route is active inherits its trace"); for now, callers who want that pattern can wrap their route's build in OTel.tracer().startActiveSpanAsync(...) themselves.
• Limitation: routes opened in a nested Navigator (modal sheets, dialogs not pushed onto the root navigator, etc.) won't fire the observer unless that nested Navigator is also given the same observer instance. This is a NavigatorObserver contract, not a package limitation.

License

Apache 2.0 — see LICENSE.