opencensus-ext-azure

What it is and what it does

opencensus-ext-azure is an exporter that bridges Python applications instrumented with OpenCensus to Azure Monitor (Application Insights). It captures logs, metrics, traces, and performance counters and sends them to Azure Monitor for centralized observability. The package integrates with Python's standard logging module and OpenCensus's stats and tracing APIs, allowing developers to emit telemetry without rewriting application code.

The package depends on azure-core, azure-identity, opencensus, psutil, and requests. However, it is no longer maintained—the repository was archived and the package reached end-of-support in September 2024. The maintainers explicitly recommend migrating to the Azure Monitor OpenTelemetry exporters or the Azure Monitor OpenTelemetry Distro for new projects.

Use it for:

• Send application logs to Azure Monitor for centralized log aggregation and search.
• Export custom metrics and performance counters to Azure Monitor for dashboarding and alerting.
• Correlate logs with distributed traces by enriching log records with trace and span IDs.
• Monitor application health and performance using Azure Monitor's built-in analytics on exported telemetry.
• Integrate legacy Python applications already using OpenCensus with Azure's observability platform.

Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page — verify before relying

Exports logs, metrics, and traces from Python applications to Azure Monitor using the OpenCensus instrumentation framework.

No. The package is abandoned and officially unsupported since September 2024. While it has low install friction and no known vulnerabilities, the maintainers explicitly recommend migrating to Azure Monitor OpenTelemetry exporters instead. Use this package only if you are maintaining legacy code already dependent on it; for new projects, adopt the OpenTelemetry-based solution.

Install

opencensus-ext-azure on PyPI

pip install opencensus-ext-azure

uv add opencensus-ext-azure

poetry add opencensus-ext-azure

Installing opencensus-ext-azure

Before you install

Low install friction with five stable runtime dependencies. However, the package is abandoned as of June 2025 and officially unsupported since September 2024—the maintainers recommend migrating to Azure Monitor OpenTelemetry exporters instead.

License in practice

Licensed under Apache-2.0 (permissive), allowing commercial and private use with minimal restrictions.

Quickstart

pip install opencensus-ext-azure

import logging
from opencensus.ext.azure.log_exporter import AzureLogHandler

logger = logging.getLogger(__name__)
logger.addHandler(AzureLogHandler(connection_string='InstrumentationKey=<key>'))
logger.warning('Hello, World!')

Requires an Azure Monitor resource and instrumentation key or connection string, typically set via APPLICATIONINSIGHTS_CONNECTION_STRING environment variable.

Verify before relying

• Whether the package still functions reliably with current Azure Monitor API versions despite abandonment
• Compatibility with Python versions beyond 3.9, given the classifier list ends there

Package facts

Evidence: opencensus_ext_azure-1.1.15-py2.py3-none-any.whl

Tags

More Monitoring packages