Patching libraries to instrument downstream calls - Amazon X-Ray
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Patching libraries to instrument downstream calls

Note

X-Ray SDK/Daemon Maintenance Notice – On February 25th, 2026, the Amazon X-Ray SDKs/Daemon will enter maintenance mode, where Amazon will limit X-Ray SDK and Daemon releases to address security issues only. For more information on the support timeline, see X-Ray SDK and Daemon Support timeline. We recommend to migrate to OpenTelemetry. For more information on migrating to OpenTelemetry, see Migrating from X-Ray instrumentation to OpenTelemetry instrumentation .

To instrument downstream calls, use the X-Ray SDK for Ruby to patch the libraries that your application uses. The X-Ray SDK for Ruby can patch the following libraries.

Supported Libraries

  • net/http – Instrument HTTP clients.

  • aws-sdk – Instrument Amazon SDK for Ruby clients.

When you use a patched library, the X-Ray SDK for Ruby creates a subsegment for the call and records information from the request and response. A segment must be available for the SDK to create the subsegment, either from the SDK middleware or a call to XRay.recorder.begin_segment.

To patch libraries, specify them in the configuration object that you pass to the X-Ray recorder.

Example main.rb – Patch libraries
require 'aws-xray-sdk'

config = {
  name: 'my app',
  patch: %I[net_http aws_sdk]
}

XRay.recorder.configure(config)