Adding New Observability Destination

There are tens if not hundreds of different observability destinations. Odigos goal is to provide a seamless and easy way to ship observability data to any one of them.

In this guide, you will learn how to contribute a new destination to Odigos. We will create a new dummy destination called mydest. Creating a new destination involves two steps:

1. Extending the UI for the new destination
2. Adding the collector configuration for the new destination

​

User Interface

For our new destination to be visible in the UI, we need to make several changes to the UI code:

1. Go to ui/img/vendor directory and add your logo file, for example mydest.svg. Please use svg format for the logo.
2. Go to ui/vendors directory and create a new file called mydest.tsx.
3. Start by adding the required import statements (Notice that line 6 points to the file you created in step 1).

import {
  ObservabilityVendor,
  ObservabilitySignals,
  VendorObjects,
} from "@/vendors/index";
import MyDestLogo from "@/img/vendor/mydest.svg";
import { NextApiRequest } from "next";

4. Create a class called MyDest that implements the ObservabilityVendor interface:

export class MyDest implements ObservabilityVendor {
  name = "mydest";
  displayName = "My Destination";
  supportedSignals = [ObservabilitySignals.Traces, ObservabilitySignals.Metrics];

  getLogo = (props: any) => {
    return <MyDestLogo {...props} />;
  };

Everything should be self-explanatory. Specify the name (unique lowercase string) of the destination, the display name (human-readable string) and the observability signals your destination supports. The getLogo method should return a React component that will be used as the logo for the destination.

5. Specify the required fields for communicating with the destination by implementing the getFields method:

getFields = () => {
  return [
    {
      displayName: "URL",
      id: "url",
      name: "url",
      type: "url",
    },
    {
      displayName: "Region",
      id: "region",
      name: "region",
      type: "text",
    },
    {
      displayName: "API Key",
      id: "apikey",
      name: "apikey",
      type: "password",
    },
  ];
};

This method returns an array of IDestField objects. The type field corresponds to the type of input field that will be displayed in the UI.

6. Add the method toObjects. This method converts the data received from the UI to the data that will be persisted in the Kubernetes data store. Each destination can have nonsecret data (like region) - defined in the Data field of the returned object and secret data (like API key) - defined in the Secret field of the returned object.

toObjects = (req: NextApiRequest) => {
  return {
    Data: {
      MYDEST_URL: req.body.url,
      MYDEST_REGION: req.body.region,
    },
    Secret: {
      MYDEST_API_KEY: Buffer.from(req.body.apikey).toString("base64"),
    },
  };
};

7. Add the mthod mapDataToFields which converts the data received from the Kubernetes data store to the data that will be displayed in the UI. This method is invoked when user edits the destination in the UI.

mapDataToFields = (data: any) => {
  return {
    url: data.MYDEST_URL,
    region: data.MYDEST_REGION,
  };
};

8. Finally, register the destination you just created by modifying theui/vendors/index.ts file:

// Add an import for the new destination
import { MyDest } from "@/vendors/mydest";

// Add the new destination to the list of vendors
const Vendors = [/* List of existing vendors... */ new MyDest()];

For a complete UI implementation example, see one of our existing vendors.

​

Collector Configuration

Now that our new vendor can be persisted/loaded in the Kubernetes data store, we need to implement the collector configuration.

1. Go to common/dests.go and add your new destination to the DestinationType enum. Make sure the value is the same as the name property of the destination UI class.
2. Go to autoscaler/controllers/gateway/config directory and create a new file called mydest.go with the following content:

package config

import (
	odigosv1 "github.com/keyval-dev/odigos/api/v1alpha1"
	commonconf "github.com/keyval-dev/odigos/autoscaler/controllers/common"
	"github.com/keyval-dev/odigos/common"
)

type MyDest struct{}

func (m *MyDest) DestType() common.DestinationType {
	return common.MyDestDestinationType
}

func (m *MyDest) ModifyConfig(dest *odigosv1.Destination, currentConfig *commonconf.Config) {
    // Modify the config here
    	if isTracingEnabled(dest) {
		currentConfig.Exporters["otlp/mydest"] = commonconf.GenericMap{
			"endpoint": "https://mydest.com:4317",
			"headers": commonconf.GenericMap{
				"x-mydest-header-apikey": "${MYDEST_API_KEY}",
			},
		}

		currentConfig.Service.Pipelines["traces/mydest"] = commonconf.Pipeline{
			Receivers:  []string{"otlp"},
			Processors: []string{"batch"},
			Exporters:  []string{"otlp/mydest"},
		}
	}
}

• The method DestType returns the enum value of the destination added earlier.
• The method ModifyConfig is called with the dest object which holds the data received from the UI and the currentConfig object. The currentConfig object contains the current configuration of the gateway collector. Modify this object to include the OpenTelemetry configuration needed by your destination. Make sure to give any exporter or pipeline a unique name in order to avoid conflicts (use the convention traces/<dest-name> for traces pipelines and otlp/<dest-name> for OpenTelemetry exporters). You can assume a basic configuration is already provided in the currentConfig object, for details see getBasicConfig method in autoscaler/controllers/gateway/config/root.go file.
• You can use the utility methods isTracingEnabled, isMetricsEnabled and isLoggingEnabled to determine which signals are selected by the user for the destination and configure the collector accordingly.
• The last step is to register the new destination struct in the autoscaler/controllers/gateway/config/root.go file:

var availableConfigers = []Configer{/* List of existing destinations  */, &MyDest{}}

That’s it! Now you can use your new destination in the UI and send data to it.

Please submit a PR to the odigos git repository, we are happy to accept new destinations.