open-telemetry / open-telemetry/opentelemetry-ruby

Fix OTLP Metrics Exporter error when attributes is `nil`

Open
#1,681 3 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

keep metrics
Dominant language
Ruby
Stars
606
Forks
301
Avg merge
3d 19h
Merged PRs (30d)
42

Description

During testing, I've run into issues with OTLP export when an instrument is recorded without attributes.

For example, when record is called on a histogram without attributes: histogram.record(123)

This error is logged:

E, [2024-08-01T13:41:56.081704 #86303] ERROR -- : OpenTelemetry error: unexpected error in OTLP::MetricsExporter#encode - undefined method map' for nil`

Which comes from this LOC because hdp.attributes is nil.

I haven't been able to track down a specific line in the spec that explains whether attributes must be present, but my hunch is that they're optional.

After this discussion, @xuan-cao-swi and I think the best approach would be to update update the default value of the attributes argument on the record methods to be an empty hash.

Looking at the code, it seems like histogram and up_down_counter need to be fixed, but there may be other areas that need updates as well.

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 at exporter/otlp-metrics/lib/opentelemetry/exporter/otlp/metrics_exporter.rb line 274 and trace the histogram and up_down_counter record methods mentioned in the issue. Reproduce the histogram.record(123) case, inspect other record methods for the same default, and verify OTLP export no longer logs the nil map error.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
ruby
Domain
observability
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
42/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.