A Practical Guide to Building Python Based Extensions with Dynatrace

[@sachinpai2648]

Loved Extension feature of Dynatrace. We can add more features to our observability. Really appreciate the effort put in explaining features with demo. Hopefully Dynatrace team build more declarative extension and custom ones. Keep up the good work.

[@user-li8sy7rj6m]

Thank you, Can you please create a video to explain how to create a custom plugin for dynatrace using python

[@Luke997]

Thanks for the input. We'll look into doing that once the documentation is closer to finished so there is a good reference.

[@AmitChiba]

Very helpful. Thank you!

[@dynatrace]

Thank you for watching!

[@ashokpj3807]

Nicely explained

[@xtraspecialj]

So, still struggling to get this going... I have the extension 2.0 SDK running in my vsCode, but I don't understand where I put my actual python script and I don't understand what I use to send metrics to Dynatrace once my script has the data. I tried downloading other extensions from the Hub, but those are packaged extensions and the way they look isn't the same as what my pre-built extension looks. I just need to query an API endpoint, get the metrics, then send them to Dynatrace. I can write a Python script that gets the data, but I have no clue where to put that in the context of the Dynatrace extension nor how to send those metrics to Dynatrace. I've looked through the documentation and there isn't anywhere that clearly explains it that I could find.

[@dynatrace]

Hello and thank you for the feedback, Regarding downloading extensions from the hub, even though they're "packaged" files, you can extract the `whl` files with any extractor tool (like 7zip) and get to the code! Furthermore, we have an example extension here: github.com/dynatrace-extensions/python-rabbitmq, that does exactly what you need to do, fetch data from APIs and send it to Dynatrace. We hope this helps!

[@xtraspecialj]

@@dynatrace That helps a little, but that rabbitmq extension is fairly hard-coded for rabbitMQ, so it's a bit hard to extrapolate it for what I'm trying to do. Not to mention it's not commented well at all, so there's very little explanation throughout. Is there a video that walks through creating a Python 2.0 extension that actually does something that one would do in the real world? Preferably one that queries some API endpoint, gathers some metrics and maybe some logs, then sends those metrics and logs to Dynatrace? I'm finally starting to understand what the extension.yaml and activationSchema.json do and how to use them, but it's been a struggle getting to this point even, lol... Something that gives very specific examples on not just what, but also why things are done would be VERY helpful for newbies like me. I'm sure once you understand all this stuff it seems easy in hindsight, but I've got to tell you; unless you're maybe a computer scientist, this is not easy at all...

[@dynatrace]

Hello, You can also try to reference this guide: dynatr.ac/3KFutAa. It teaches how to create a Python extension that calls an API extension step-by-step.

[@dynatrace]

@@xtraspecialj ​​You can take a look at this guide: dynatr.ac/3KFutAa. It teaches how to create a Python extension that calls an API extension step-by-step.

[@xtraspecialj]

@@dynatrace ooh, is that new? I swear I feel like I've found everything I could about the python extension framework and extension 2.0 in general and haven't seen that. That's exactly what I need, thanks!

[@gramtl]

Amazing !! Thanks