Consider using new URL syntax in Django 2.0 as transaction name

[beniwohli]

Since the Opbeat days, we use the view name as the transaction name for Django, while in Flask we use the parametrized URL. The main reason for this was that Django used unwieldy regex in its URLs, which would make the transaction names somewhat ugly.

In Django 2.0, a new way for defining URLs was added and made the default, URL paths. These quite closely mirror Flask.

As such, it might be interesting to use these paths as transaction name for Django to align both Flask and Django.

Benefits of using view name

• as a user, it's easier to find the actual code if you don't have to look up the view in your URLs first (and Django URL patterns tend to be deeply nested, making it even more difficult to look up the view name). This could be alleviated somewhat by putting the view name in the context or using it as a tag
• less "weird" characters in the transaction name

Benefits of using path name

• aligned with Flask and AFAIK, Node
• multiple paths can point to the same view (or view class). Using the path would keep them separate. This is especially true for e.g. Django Rest Framework or tastypie. If a) we used paths and b) those frameworks would use paths instead of regexes, we wouldn't need to do any magic like https://gist.github.com/beniwohli/b494bd4b368ea4095dad3b629333ae58

[jalvz]

i'd say url paths. the benefits of using views are valid, but that is an inconvenience you have also when coding in django, it always take a couple of greps to go from view to path and viceversa anyways.

actually putting the view in the context is a great idea

[beniwohli]

argh, they don't store the actual route name anywhere, so I can't get it :(

Guess I need to open a Django PR....

[beniwohli]

Opened an Issue/PR for this: https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/28766

[webjunkie]

Here is the patch by the way, for future reference: django/django#9323 (got closed unfortunately)

[cristianmedeiros]

django/django#9323

it moved to here(django/django#10657) and got merged

[Giaco9]

Hi all, is there any way to bring the same or similar functionality also to Django 1.11.20? Briefly, my situation is:

• APM version 6.6 running on multiple docker containers
• Elasticsearch version 6.6 running on multiple docker containers
• Python agent version 4.1.0
• Django version 1.11.20
• Rest framework version 3.7.7

Would be great if the transaction name will be either METHOD path with regexp or METHOD url name.
Should I open a dedicated issue for that?

Thanks

[beniwohli]

@Giaco9 unfortunately, previous to Django 2.2, this information isn't exposed by Django, so we could only get to it with pretty gnarly monkey patching, which in my opinion isn't worth the benefit.

For Django Rest Framework viewsets specifically, I wrote a workaround that includes the action in the transaction name. It's available here: https://gist.github.com/beniwohli/8bc26c43396d3fb3b2c38e0dad680633

[Giaco9]

Thank you @beniwohli, so I just need to make all of my ViewSets inherit from the one you posted and will work 👍

Thank you again