Encoding extensions

The encoding extensions can be used by compatible receivers or exporters to encode or decode data into/from a specific format. This is useful when the data is being sent to/from a system that expects a specific format and doesn't support the OpenTelemetry protocol.

🚧 Under active development 🚧

Component Milestones

To help track what work needs to be done with this component, these are the currently active goals being worked towards.

Development

• Add encoding extensions support additionally to the existing ways of configuring encodings (where applicable) to the following components:
  • file receiver
  • file exporter
  • kafka receiver
  • kafka exporter
  • kinesis exporter
  • pulsar receiver
  • pulsar exporter
• Add encoding extensions for open source formats, ie: otlp, zipkin, jaeger
• Deprecate the previously available ways of configuring encodings (where applicable).
• Remove the previously available ways of configuring encodings in favour of using the encoding extension.

Example configuration

extensions:
  zipkin_encoding:
    protocol: zipkin_proto
    version: v2

receivers:
  kafka:
    traces:
      encoding: zipkin_encoding
    # ... other configuration values