Observing GraphQL errors with OpenTelemetry

Running GraphQL in production presents significant challenges, particularly in identifying error sources, but OpenTelemetry offers a solution through enhanced monitoring and tracing capabilities. Unlike REST APIs, where HTTP status codes indicate errors, GraphQL returns errors within the data response even with a 200 HTTP status code, complicating error detection and differentiation between client and server issues. By implementing OpenTelemetry, developers can manually instrument GraphQL servers to capture error details in distributed traces, facilitating better troubleshooting and performance optimization. Additionally, OpenTelemetry enables the generation of RED metrics—Rate, Errors, and Duration—by configuring the span metrics connector, allowing for effective monitoring and alerting on GraphQL errors. This approach not only enhances the user experience by streamlining error handling but also contributes to system reliability, making OpenTelemetry an invaluable tool for managing GraphQL operations in production environments.