[exporter/loki] Documentation incorrect on mapping severity to level

[alexgenon]

Component(s)

exporter/loki

Describe the issue you're reporting

The Loki exporter documentation states that the record.severity is mapping to record.attributes.level (used by Loki) but it appears that it is the severityNumber which is used for the mapping (code reference)

[github-actions]

Pinging code owners:

• exporter/loki: @gramidt @gouthamve @jpkrohling @mar4uk

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[jpkrohling]

@mar4uk, do you remember if this was changed from the original implementation?

[crobert-1]

Sorry if this is obvious, but what's the difference from the code vs. documentation? From my understanding of the OTLP log spec, severity would be the SeverityNumber that's being used, and then record.attributes.level is what's being used in code. Where's the mismatch that you're seeing?

Is the expectation from documentation that the exporter should actually be getting the severity from a different field in a log that's explicitly named severity? I guess in my reading I assumed severity in this case is equivalent to SeverityNumber, but if that's the case maybe documentation should be updated to match more exactly?

For context, it looks like this functionality along with the README comment came in the same change.

[alexgenon]

@crobert-1, indeed, the goal is to correct the documentation on the mapping.
There are 2 fields in the OTLP log spec: SeverityText and SeverityNumber.
In the documentation of the loki exporter, it is stated that record.severity (which corresponds to SeverityText is used to defined loki's record.attributes.level but in the code, it is actually SeverityNumber which is used.
This is linked to #28612 which is asking for the entire removal of the promotion of the severity as a Loki label.

[crobert-1]

Okay, thanks for the clarification! I didn't know there was an understanding that record.severity corresponds to SeverityText here. 👍

[github-actions]

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Pinging code owners:

• exporter/loki: @gramidt @gouthamve @jpkrohling @mar4uk

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