How to customize the Astra Traffic collector

Customizing Traffic Collector Configuration

Sensor can be customized to filter, templatize and redact the traces generated from traffic. These customization are present to give flexibility to the customer to define a rule to choose a trace to be monitored. Similarly, personally identified information in the trace can be redacted before it reaches Astra's server. This way it can be ensured that no sensitive data leaves customers environment. Lets look at configuring each of them in detail.

Filtering

Filtering can be achieved based on a trace attribute: `url.host`or url.template. Primarily, filtering can be divided into AllowListing and ExcludeListing.
AllowListing refers to allowing the traces orginated from the specfifc host/pattern.
ExcludeListing refers to excluding the traces matching specific host/pattern.

Locate the custom_config.yaml under installation directory of astra-traffic-collector. Edit the custom_config.yaml

processors:
  filter/custom:
      error_mode: ignore
      traces:
        span:
          ## allowing traces based on hostname regex pattern. Following will drop all traces originated from host other than: localhost*
          - IsMatch(attributes["url.host"], "localhost*") == false
          ## excluding traces based on hostname regex pattern. Following will drop all traces originated from host: localhost*
          - IsMatch(attributes["url.host"], "localhost*")
          ## excluding traces based on template regex pattern. Following will drop all traces having url_template: _wdt*
          - IsMatch(attributes["url.template"], "_wdt*")

Templatizing

Templatizing is a useful way to templatize the API Path. Although Astra takes care of templatizing integer, UUID, ULID, Timestamp etc, still there is a flexibility for the customers to write their own templates for the pattern that they are aware of.

Scenario: Imagine you’re running an online marketplace where sellers create unique product pages. Your API receives URLs like:

/api/v1/products/details/prod-12r4ty  
/api/v1/products/details/prod-qw34tg  
/api/v1/products/details/prod-gy78fg

These dynamic values (prod-12r4ty, prod-qw34tg , etc.) represent product IDs. To replace dynamic segments with a template (e.g., {{product_id}}).

Edit the custom_config.yaml as shown below

processors:
  transform/custom:
    error_mode: ignore
    trace_statements:
      - context: span
        statements:
          ## Templatize url path regex pattern by keyword: "slug". Following will templatize the url Path: /api/v1/products/details/prod-12r4ty   ->  /api/v1/products/details/{{product_id}}
          - replace_pattern(attributes["url.template"], "prod-*", "{{product_id}}")

Redacting

Redacting can be achieved by finding the right regex pattern to be redacted. Redaction ensures that sensitive information are not leaving customers environment. Let's see how to redact a PII such as CreditCard number

Edit the custom_config.yaml as shown below

processors:
  transform/custom:
    error_mode: ignore
    trace_statements:
      - context: span
        statements:
          ## Redact MasterCard credit card number
          - replace_all_patterns(attributes, "value", "^5[1-5][0-9]{14}$", "{{CreditCard}}")

Restart the astra-traffic-collector
Depending on linux, mac or windows, restart astra-traffic-collector docker container
For Kubernetes based, refer here to know how to restart astra-traffic-collector

Redaction will be applied to every part of the trace including request body/header, response body/header, query parameters etc

Verify the traces before sending them to Astra

It's essential to verify the required redaction and filtering is working before opting to send the traces to Astra backend. To do so, follow the below mentioned steps

Edit the custom_config.yaml to restrict the exporting only to logs

processors:
  #your custom processing including redacting, filtering and templatizing....

service:
    pipelines:
      traces:
        exporters: [debug]

Restart the astra-traffic-collector
Depending on linux, mac or windows, restart astra-traffic-collector docker container
For Kubernetes based, refer here to know how to restart astra-traffic-collector

Verify the traces by inspecting astra-traffic-collector logs

docker logs astra-traffic-collector

After the verification is over, please remove exporter added

processors:
  #your custom processing including redacting, filtering and templatizing....

Updated on: 25/02/2025

Was this article helpful?

Thank you!