Add ignoreNetworkEvents flag to @opentelemetry/instrumentation-xml-http-request to suppress extra span events

[chris-armstrong]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

@opentelemetry/instrumentation-xml-http-request adds a number of span events for each HTTP request used to profile different stages of the request. It would be handy to turn this off, as it is not useful for our use case and consumes unwanted resources.

The @opentelemetry/instrumentation-fetch implementation has a similar feature with the ignoreNetworkEvents flag.

Describe the solution you'd like

A new configuration option ignoreNetworkEvents that suppresses the generation of span events related to the network timing e.g.

new XMLHttpRequestInstrumentation({
  enabled: true,
  ignoreNetworkEvents: true,
});

Describe alternatives you've considered

A customisation hook for the network events may be another option, but I don't know any use cases for that.

Additional context

N/A

[legendecas]

I believe this can be a good-to-have feature that can be generalized for web instrumentation (like mentioned in #3062 (comment)).

[github-actions]

This issue is stale because it has been open 60 days with no activity. Remove stale label or comment or this will be closed in 14 days.

[github-actions]

This issue was closed because it has been stale for 14 days with no activity.