laravel8-dd-tracer

Laravel 8 + PHP 7.4 — Datadog APM Instrumentation

Instrument a Laravel 8 application (PHP 7.4, Apache2) with Datadog APM tracing.

Prerequisites

• Laravel 8 + PHP 7.4 + Apache2 running on EC2 (see setup-laravel8-apache2 skill)
• SSH access to the EC2 instance
• Datadog API key and site location

Instructions

1. Install the Datadog Agent

ssh -i <KEY_PATH> ubuntu@<EC2_HOST> 'DD_API_KEY=<DD_API_KEY> \
    DD_SITE="<DD_SITE>" \
    bash -c "$(curl -L https://install.datadoghq.com/scripts/install_script_agent7.sh)"'

2. Install the PHP tracer

ssh -i <KEY_PATH> ubuntu@<EC2_HOST> 'curl -LO https://github.com/DataDog/dd-trace-php/releases/latest/download/datadog-setup.php && \
    sudo php datadog-setup.php --php-bin=all'

3. Configure unified service tagging

For Apache2 with mod_php, add environment variables to the Apache VirtualHost or to a PHP INI file:

ssh -i <KEY_PATH> ubuntu@<EC2_HOST> 'echo -e "\ndatadog.service = travellist\ndatadog.env = sandbox\ndatadog.version = 1.0.0" | sudo tee -a /etc/php/7.4/apache2/conf.d/98-ddtrace.ini'

4. Restart Apache

ssh -i <KEY_PATH> ubuntu@<EC2_HOST> 'sudo systemctl restart apache2'

Validation

# Verify ddtrace extension is loaded
ssh -i <KEY_PATH> ubuntu@<EC2_HOST> 'php -m | grep ddtrace'
# -> ddtrace

# Check ddtrace in phpinfo output
curl -s http://<EC2_PUBLIC_IP>/phpinfo | grep -o 'ddtrace'
# -> ddtrace

# Generate traffic
for i in {1..10}; do curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n" http://<EC2_PUBLIC_IP>/; done

# Check agent status
ssh -i <KEY_PATH> ubuntu@<EC2_HOST> 'sudo datadog-agent status'

In the Datadog UI: APM > Services — look for travellist with env:sandbox.

Troubleshooting

ddtrace not in php -m output

Cause: PHP tracer not installed or Apache not restarted. Fix: Re-run tracer installation and restart: sudo systemctl restart apache2

Service appears as env:none

Cause: Unified service tags not configured. Fix: Add datadog.service, datadog.env, datadog.version to the PHP INI file and restart Apache.