Semantic Conventions for Exceptions in Logs

Status: Experimental

This document defines semantic conventions for recording exceptions on logs and events emitted through the Logger API.

Recording an Exception

Exceptions SHOULD be recorded as attributes on the LogRecord passed to the Logger emit operations. Exceptions MAY be recorded on “logs” or “events” depending on the context.

To encapsulate proper handling of exceptions API authors MAY provide a constructor, RecordException method/extension, or similar helper mechanism on the LogRecord class/structure or wherever it makes the most sense depending on the language runtime.

Attributes

The table below indicates which attributes should be added to the LogRecord and their types.

Attribute	Type	Description	Examples	Requirement Level
exception.message	string	The exception message.	Division by zero; Can't convert 'int' object to str implicitly	See below
exception.stacktrace	string	A stacktrace as a string in the natural representation for the language runtime. The representation is to be determined and documented by each language SIG.	Exception in thread "main" java.lang.RuntimeException: Test exception\n at com.example.GenerateTrace.methodB(GenerateTrace.java:13)\n at com.example.GenerateTrace.methodA(GenerateTrace.java:9)\n at com.example.GenerateTrace.main(GenerateTrace.java:5)	Recommended
exception.type	string	The type of the exception (its fully-qualified class name, if applicable). The dynamic type of the exception should be preferred over the static type in languages that support it.	java.net.ConnectException; OSError	See below

Additional attribute requirements: At least one of the following sets of attributes is required:

• exception.type
• exception.message

Stacktrace Representation

Same as Trace Semantic Conventions for Exceptions - Stacktrace Representation.