Context Managers¶

Opik provides context managers for creating and managing traces and spans in your application. These context managers allow you to easily instrument your code with tracing capabilities while ensuring proper cleanup and error handling.

Context managers are particularly useful when you need fine-grained control over trace and span creation, or when working with code that doesn’t fit well with the @track decorator pattern.

Available Context Managers¶

Key Features¶

Automatic Error Handling: Context managers automatically capture and log errors that occur within their scope
Distributed Tracing: Support for distributed tracing headers to maintain trace context across service boundaries
Flexible Configuration: Rich set of parameters for customizing trace and span behavior
Resource Management: Automatic cleanup and flushing of trace data
Nested Support: Context managers can be nested to create hierarchical trace structures

Basic Usage Pattern¶

import opik

with opik.start_as_current_trace("my-trace", project_name="my-project") as trace:
     # Your application logic here
     trace.input = {"user_query": "Explain quantum computing"}
     trace.output = {"response": "Quantum computing is..."}
     trace.tags = ["chat"]
     trace.metadata = {"model": "gpt-4", "temperature": 0.7}

     # Basic span creation
     with opik.start_as_current_span("llm-call", type="llm", project_name="my-project") as span:
         # Your LLM call here
         span.input = {"prompt": "Explain quantum computing"}
         span.output = {"response": "Quantum computing is..."}
         span.model = "gpt-4"
         span.provider = "openai"
         span.usage = {
             "prompt_tokens": 10,
             "completion_tokens": 50,
             "total_tokens": 60
         }

When to Use Context Managers¶

Use context managers when:

You need explicit control over trace/span lifecycle
Working with code that can’t be easily decorated
Implementing custom error handling patterns
Building distributed tracing across service boundaries
Creating complex nested trace hierarchies

For simpler use cases, consider using the @track decorator instead.