[Geneva] DateTime in env_properties are not serialized properly

[vidommet]

Issue with OpenTelemetry.Exporter.Geneva

List of all OpenTelemetry NuGet
packages and version that you are
using (e.g. OpenTelemetry 1.3.2):

<PackageReference Include="OpenTelemetry.Exporter.Geneva" Version="1.4.1" />

Runtime version (e.g. net462, net48, net6.0, net7.0 etc. You can
find this information from the *.csproj file):

net6.0

Is this a feature request or a bug?

• Feature Request
• Bug

What is the expected behavior?

Proper serialization of DateTime if not in custom fields. (part of env_properties)

What is the actual behavior?

Output is EXT(type:-1,size:12)

Additional Context

DateTime serialization works as expected if using custom columns but doesn't work if using env_properties.

Consider logger.LogInformation("Test {body}", DateTime.UtcNow);

This works if using

lo.AddGenevaLogExporter(c =>
{
    c.ConnectionString = "EtwSession=OpenTelemetry";
});

But doesn't if using

lo.AddGenevaLogExporter(c =>
{
    c.CustomFields = Array.Empty<string>();
    c.ConnectionString = "EtwSession=OpenTelemetry";
});

[chenxinyanc]

I'm observing similar issue and found this thread gets closed. Is there any suggestion except from explicitly setting the CustomFields? We don't want to expand our custom dimensions into a lot of columns in Geneva, so we'd prefer leveraging env_properties to collect them together into 1 column. However, We found that DateTime could not be serialized properly in the same fashion as this issue has described.

[zhongyehong]

Hey @utpilla @chenxinyanc , would like to know any update on this? We are facing the same issues, can we configure to avoid this? Thank you so much

[utpilla]

Is there any suggestion except from explicitly setting the CustomFields?

@chenxinyanc @zhongyehong You could call .ToString() on the DateTime field while logging.