The Mapped Diagnostic Context (MDC) is
an instrument for distinguishing interleaved log output from different sources. — log4j MDC documentation
It contains thread-local contextual information which is later copied to each logging event captured by a logging library.
The OTel Java agent injects several pieces of information about the current span into each logging event's MDC copy:
traceId
- the current trace id (same asTracingContextUtils.getCurrentSpan().getContext().getTraceIdAsHexString()
);spanId
- the current span id (same asTracingContextUtils.getCurrentSpan().getContext().getSpanIdAsHexString()
);sampled
- a boolean flag marking whether the current span is sampled or not (same asTracingContextUtils.getCurrentSpan().getContext().isSampled()
).
Those three pieces of information can be included in log statements produced by the logging library by specifying them in the pattern/format. Example for Spring Boot configuration (which uses logback):
logging.pattern.console = %d{yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss} - %logger{36} - %msg t:%X{traceId} s:%X{spanId} %n
This way any services or tools that parse the application logs can correlate traces/spans with log statements.
Library | Version |
---|---|
Log4j 1 | 1.2+ |
Log4j 2 | 2.7+ |
Logback | 1.0+ |