AWS XRay with AWS SDK v3 for NodeJS

Question

Is there any way how to use XRay instrumentation for AWS NodeJS SDK v3? In SDK v2, AWSXray was able to capture any client and instrument it for tracing into XRay. I have been trying the same thing with v3 with following snippet

const  {DynamoDBClient, ScanCommand} = require("@aws-sdk/client-dynamodb");
const AWSXRay = require("aws-xray-sdk");
// if uncommented, this throws an exception
// AWSXRay.captureAWSClient(DynamoDBClient); 

const client = new DynamoDBClient({region: process.env.AWS_REGION});
// if uncommented, this throws an exception
// AWSXRay.captureAWSClient(client);

const scan = new ScanCommand({
    TableName: 'xxx',
});
await client.send(scan) //?

but both commented lines throw service.customizeRequests is not a function. This seems like AWS SDK s3 is not backward-compatible with original AWSXRay library.

I found that SDK v3 contains XRay client, but this is just a client that can send spans and traces into AWS, not an instrumentation agent.

What's recommended pattern of using XRay instrumentation with AWS SDK v3 for NodeJS?

Answer 1

You need to use v3 compatible x-ray-sdk capture function captureAWSv3Client

Here is working snippet:

const {DynamoDBClient, ScanCommand} = require("@aws-sdk/client-dynamodb");
const AWSXRay = require("aws-xray-sdk-core");

const dynamoClient = AWSXRay.captureAWSv3Client(
    new DynamoDBClient({})
)

const scan = new ScanCommand({
    TableName: 'xxx',
});

const response = await dynamoClient.send(scan)

It is also important to have permissions to write into X-Ray eg using SAM:

Policies:
  - AWSXrayWriteOnlyAccess