jackc / jackc/pgx

Lower Level Tracing

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Dominant language
Go
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Description

**Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.**
I've been tracing PGX since before any of the tracing methods existed. The new APIs are excellent but still seem to leave a gap. Specifically I want to trace the arguments but in some cases there can be arbitrarily complex encoding through `pgtype` etc. so it'd be nice to be able to add a trace to see not just see the original Go struct but the value it encodes into.

While I could use the `*pgtype.Map` to try to encode each value I would have to know details like their oid that aren't available until you reach lower level parts of the API like `pgconn`. Therefore I'd like to ask for some way to support this tracing.

**Describe the solution you'd like**
There are roughly two approaches I can see. Something like `TraceExecParams`, `TraceQueryParams` etc. could help but my only concern is that I'd also have to do my best to force the text encoding in order to render it the easiest. Just by reading [QueryExecMode](https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/jackc/pgx/v5#QueryExecMode) or similar I'm unsure if I could leverage any of them to force a text encoding more often and extra roundtrips sound unappealing.

The most direct API that would help me specifically would be an API like this:
```ts
newArgs, _ := pgx.RawArguments(originalArgs, pgtype.TextFormatCode)

for _, arg := range newArgs {
if arg.IsBinary {
// Do something reasonable. I know it's impossible to encode everything in text but I honestly don't know how to handle tracing binary arguments
} else {
fmt.Println("Got string argument", arg)
}
}

pgx.Query(ctx, sql, pgx.RawArgs(newArgs))
```

This only works because my tracing already works by reimplementing `pgx.Conn` as an interface (since it predates the existing tracing) but I understand that's probably a less broadly useful API.

**Describe alternatives you've considered**
Either doubling up on the encoding by using available the `pgtype` code or the rather unappealing idea of avoiding doubling up encoding by making my own abstraction around `pgconn`.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by reviewing the existing tracing APIs, QueryExecMode, pgtype.Map, and the lower-level pgconn encoding path mentioned in the issue. The work is complete when an agreed API exposes encoded query arguments for tracing, including a defined treatment of binary values, without requiring undesirable extra round trips or duplicate encoding.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
go, postgresql
Domain
databases
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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