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Exceptions Connector

Status Available in: contrib, k8s Maintainers: @marctc Source: opentelemetry-collector-contrib

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Overview

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Overview

Generate metrics and logs from recorded application exceptions associated with spans. Each metric and log will have at least the following dimensions:
  • Service name
  • Span name
  • Span kind
  • Status code
With the provided default config, each metric and log will also have the following dimensions:
  • Exception message
  • Exception type
Each log will additionally have the following attributes:
  • Exception stacktrace
  • Span attributes. If you want to filter out some attributes (like only copying HTTP attributes starting with http.) use the transform processor.

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Configurations

If you are not already familiar with connectors, you may find it helpful to first visit the Connectors README. The following settings can be optionally configured:
  • dimensions: the list of dimensions to add together with the default dimensions defined above. Each additional dimension is defined with a name which is looked up in the span’s collection of attributes or resource attributes. The provided default config includes exception.type and exception.message as additional dimensions.
  • exemplars: Use to configure how to attach exemplars to metrics.
    • enabled (default: false): enabling will add spans as Exemplars.

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Examples

The following is a simple example usage of the exceptions connector. 
receivers:
  nop:

exporters:
  nop:

connectors:
  exceptions:

service:
  pipelines:
    traces:
      receivers: [nop]
      exporters: [exceptions]
    metrics:
      receivers: [exceptions]
      exporters: [nop]
    logs:
      receivers: [exceptions]
      exporters: [nop]
The following is a more complex example usage of the exceptions connector using Prometheus and Loki as exporters. 
receivers:
  otlp:
    protocols:
      grpc:
      http:

exporters:
  prometheusremotewrite:
    endpoint: http://prometheus:9090/api/v1/write
  loki:
    endpoint: http://loki:3100/loki/api/v1/push

connectors:
  exceptions:

service:
  pipelines:
    traces:
      receivers: [otlp]
      exporters: [exceptions]
    metrics:
      receivers: [exceptions]
      exporters: [prometheusremotewrite]
    logs:
      receivers: [exceptions]
      exporters: [loki]
The full list of settings exposed for this connector are documented in exceptionsconnector/config.go.

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More Examples

For more example configuration covering various other use cases, please visit the testdata directory.

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Configuration

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Example Configuration

# default configuration
exceptions/default:

# configuration with all possible parameters
exceptions/full:
  # Additional list of dimensions on top of:
  # - service.name
  # - span.name
  # - span.kind
  # - status.code
  # - exception.stacktrace (Only for log records)
  dimensions:
    - name: exception.type
    - name: exception.message
Last generated: 2026-04-13