collector-component

OpenTelemetry Collector Component Scaffolding

Scaffold new OTel Collector components following the canonical patterns from the opentelemetry-collector-contrib repository.

Workflow

1. Determine component type: receiver, processor, exporter, connector, or extension
2. Determine signal types (traces, metrics, logs); connectors need input+output signals
3. Choose a Go module path (e.g., github.com/org/repo/receiver/myreceiver)
4. Generate the file set below
5. Run go mod tidy to resolve dependencies

File Layout

Every component follows this structure:

mycomponent/
  metadata.yaml
  doc.go
  config.go
  config_test.go
  factory.go
  factory_test.go
  <component>.go
  <component>_test.go
  go.mod
  go.sum
  README.md
  internal/metadata/    # generated by mdatagen
  testdata/             # test config fixtures

metadata.yaml

Drives code generation via mdatagen. Generates internal/metadata/ with type constants and stability levels.

type: mycomponent

status:
  class: receiver  # receiver | processor | exporter | connector | extension
  stability:
    # For receiver/processor/exporter: list signal types per stability:
    beta: [metrics]
    alpha: [traces, logs]
    # For connector: use input_to_output format:
    # alpha: [traces_to_metrics]
    # For extension:
    # alpha: [extension]
  distributions: [contrib]
  codeowners:
    active: [githubuser]

tests:
  config:
    # Key-value pairs matching Config struct fields for lifecycle tests

doc.go

// Package mycomponent ...
package mycomponent

//go:generate mdatagen metadata.yaml

config.go Pattern

package mycomponent

import "go.opentelemetry.io/collector/confmap/xconfmap"

var _ xconfmap.Validator = (*Config)(nil)

type Config struct {
    Field string `mapstructure:"field"`
}

func (c *Config) Validate() error {
    // Return non-nil for invalid config
    return nil
}

Use mapstructure tags for all fields. Implement xconfmap.Validator for validation.