Allow custom trace ids

[JohnnyBeet]

Is your proposal related to a problem?

I want to correlate hasura engine logs with requests coming from my frontend. Right now this is not possible in free version. This is frustrating, especially because hasura already generates trace ids for requests, but cannot extract them from headers.

Describe the solution you'd like

I'd like for free version of hasura to be able to extract and use trace id from some standardized tracing headers (e.g. traceparent from W3C).

Describe alternatives you've considered

I was considering sending it as custom headers, but those seems to be static, not dynamic.

[robertjdominguez]

This is something I’ve run into myself when trying to correlate frontend requests with Hasura logs in OSS, @JohnnyBeet.

While dynamic header extraction (like pulling traceparent or x-request-id at request-time) isn’t supported in the free version, I’ve found a decent workaround that might fit your use case: using a lightweight reverse proxy (like nginx) in front of Hasura.

You can:

• Configure the proxy to capture the incoming trace ID (traceparent header or your custom header).
  Inject that trace ID into proxy logs.
• Optionally, forward the header to Hasura as a custom static header (if needed by your downstream services).

You won’t get Hasura's engine logs containing the trace ID directly, but you’ll have correlated logs in your proxy, and they’ll match up nicely with your frontend trace context. It adds a thin layer, but keeps you within the OSS/free ecosystem.

That said, if deeper observability and dynamic header extraction baked into Hasura are a priority, it’s something the Cloud/Enterprise editions or DDN cover natively—but I understand not everyone wants to go that route. And, this enhancement is unlikely to be taken up for the OSS version.

[nandorholozsnyak]

That's so sad that the free version is not having this functionality at least :(