--- title: Trace Span description: A template that represents\ an individual span within a distributed trace. location: https://istio.io/docs/reference/config/policy-and-telemetry/templates/tracespan.html layout: protoc-gen-docs generator: protoc-gen-docs number_of_entries: 1 ---

The `tracespan` template represents an individual span within a distributed trace.

Example config:

    apiVersion: "config.istio.io/v1alpha2"
    kind: tracespan
    metadata:
      name: default
      namespace: istio-system
    spec:
      traceId: request.headers["x-b3-traceid"]
      spanId: request.headers["x-b3-spanid"] | ""
      parentSpanId: request.headers["x-b3-parentspanid"] | ""
      spanName: request.path | "/"
      startTime: request.time
      endTime: response.time
      clientSpan: (context.reporter.local | true) == false
      rewriteClientSpanId: false
      spanTags:
        http.method: request.method | ""
        http.status_code: response.code | 200
        http.url: request.path | ""
        request.size: request.size | 0
        response.size: response.size | 0
        source.ip: source.ip | ip("0.0.0.0")
        source.service: source.service | ""
        source.user: source.user | ""
        source.version: source.labels["version"] | ""

See also: Distributed Tracing for information on tracing within Istio.

## Template

TraceSpan represents an individual span within a distributed trace.

When writing the configuration, the value for the fields associated with this template can either be a literal or an expression. Please note that if the datatype of a field is not istio.policy.v1beta1.Value, then the expression’s inferred type must match the datatype of the field.

Field | Type | Description
--- | --- | ---
`traceId` | `string` | Trace ID is the unique identifier for a trace. All spans from the same trace share the same Trace ID. Required.
`spanId` | `string` | Span ID is the unique identifier for a span within a trace. It is assigned when the span is created. Optional.
`parentSpanId` | `string` | Parent Span ID is the unique identifier for a parent span of this span instance. If this is a root span, then this field MUST be empty. Optional.
`spanName` | `string` | Span name is a description of the span’s operation. For example, the name can be a qualified method name or a file name and a line number where the operation is called. A best practice is to use the same display name within an application and at the same call point. This makes it easier to correlate spans in different traces. Required.
`startTime` | `istio.policy.v1beta1.TimeStamp` | The start time of the span. Required.
`endTime` | `istio.policy.v1beta1.TimeStamp` | The end time of the span. Required.
`spanTags` | `map<string, istio.policy.v1beta1.Value>` | Span tags are a set of < key, value > pairs that provide metadata for the entire span. The values can be specified in the form of expressions. Optional.
`httpStatusCode` | `int64` | HTTP status code used to set the span status. If unset or set to 0, the span status will be assumed to be successful.
`clientSpan` | `bool` | client_span indicates the span kind. True for client spans and False or not provided for server spans. Using bool instead of enum is a temporary work around since mixer expression language does not yet support enum type. Optional
`rewriteClientSpanId` | `bool` | rewriteclientspan_id is used to indicate whether to create a new client span id to accommodate Zipkin shared span model. Some tracing systems like Stackdriver separates a RPC into client span and server span. To solve this incompatibility, deterministically rewriting both span id of client span and parent span id of server span to the same newly generated id. Optional