java agent reporting high cardinality metrics for http_client_duration_bucket

Hi, I am using otel java agent 1.10.1 And I see metrics like below generated for my http traffic:

http_client_duration_bucket{http_flavor="1.1",http_method="GET",http_status_code="200",http_url="https://idp.vault.dev-local.prisidio.net/.well-known/jwks.json",le="10"} 1
http_client_duration_bucket{http_flavor="1.1",http_method="GET",http_status_code="500",http_url="http://localhost:9900/stux/v1/users/92108123607311744",le="10"} 1

The http_url is logging full URL path, which produces high cardinality metrics. Looking at specs, I thought http.url should be using variable for path parameter to prevent high cardinality metrics. Is this the default expected behaviour? Is it possible to disable http.client.duration metric? or disabling default http metrics altogether? Any guidance is much appreciated. I couldn’t find much resources/discussions regarding this.

[anuraaga]

Hi @gautam-nutalapati - we have been looking at cardinality of server metrics but may have forgotten about client. I agree that we shouldn’t be populating the URL there. @mateuszrzeszutek does that sound right?

[mateuszrzeszutek]

Is there a way to disable these HTTP client metrics meanwhile when using auto-instrumentation java agent?

No, unfortunately there is no simple way to do that. Perhaps it could be achieved with implementing an extension and registering a custom view, e.g.

meterProviderBuilder
  .registerView(
    InstrumentSelector.builder()
      .setInstrumentName("http.client.duration")
      .build(),
    View.builder()
      .filterAttributes(key -> !key.equals("http.url"))
      .build())

I agree that we shouldn’t be populating the URL there. @mateuszrzeszutek does that sound right?

Yes, we should definitely fix that. Currently we’re already trimming the query from the http.url attribute; should we remove the path too? Or just include the net.* attributes instead of the URL.

CC @jsuereth