---
title: "otelcol.encoding.text | Grafana Alloy documentation"
description: "Learn about otelcol.encoding.text"
---

> For a curated documentation index, see [llms.txt](/llms.txt). For the complete documentation index, see [llms-full.txt](/llms-full.txt).

# `otelcol.encoding.text`

> **EXPERIMENTAL**: This is an [experimental](/docs/release-life-cycle/) component. Experimental components are subject to frequent breaking changes, and may be removed with no equivalent replacement. To enable and use an experimental component, you must set the `stability.level` [flag](/docs/alloy/next/reference/cli/run/) to `experimental`.

`otelcol.encoding.text` encodes and decodes OpenTelemetry log records as text. It exposes a handler that compatible `otelcol` components can use to marshal and unmarshal logs.

> Note
> 
> `otelcol.encoding.text` is a wrapper over the upstream OpenTelemetry Collector [`textencodingextension`](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.161.0/extension/encoding/textencodingextension) extension. Grafana Labs redirects bug reports or feature requests to the upstream repository when necessary.

You can specify multiple `otelcol.encoding.text` components by giving them different labels.

## Usage

Alloy ![Copy code to clipboard](/media/images/icons/icon-copy-small-2.svg) Copy

```alloy
otelcol.encoding.text "<LABEL>" {
}
```

## Arguments

You can use the following arguments with `otelcol.encoding.text`:

Expand table

| Name                     | Type     | Description                                                | Default   | Required |
|--------------------------|----------|------------------------------------------------------------|-----------|----------|
| `encoding`               | `string` | Character encoding to use when unmarshaling logs.          | `"utf8"`  | no       |
| `marshaling_separator`   | `string` | Separator to insert between marshaled log record bodies.   | `"\n"`    | no       |
| `unmarshaling_separator` | `string` | Regular expression that separates unmarshaled log records. | `"\r?\n"` | no       |

The `encoding` argument selects the character encoding used to decode input into log record bodies. The component reports an invalid configuration if the upstream extension doesn’t recognize the encoding.

The `marshaling_separator` argument separates consecutive log record bodies in marshaled output.

The `unmarshaling_separator` argument is a regular expression that splits input into log records. If `unmarshaling_separator` is empty, the decoder waits until it reaches the end of the input and decodes as a single log record.

## Blocks

The `otelcol.encoding.text` component doesn’t support any blocks. You can configure this component with arguments.

## Exported fields

The following fields are exported and can be referenced by other components:

Expand table

| Name      | Type                       | Description                                                                       |
|-----------|----------------------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| `handler` | `capsule(otelcol.Handler)` | A handler that compatible `otelcol` components can use to encode and decode logs. |

## Component health

`otelcol.encoding.text` is only reported as unhealthy if given an invalid configuration.

## Debug information

`otelcol.encoding.text` doesn’t expose any component-specific debug information.

## Debug metrics

`otelcol.encoding.text` doesn’t expose any component-specific debug metrics.

## Examples

### `otelcol.receiver.awss3`

This example uses `otelcol.encoding.text` to decode UTF-8 log records from S3 objects with keys that end in `.txt`. The receiver splits records at one or more blank lines and forwards them to `otelcol.exporter.debug`:

Alloy ![Copy code to clipboard](/media/images/icons/icon-copy-small-2.svg) Copy

```alloy
otelcol.encoding.text "default" {
	encoding               = "utf8"
	unmarshaling_separator = "(\r?\n){2,}"
}

otelcol.receiver.awss3 "default" {
	start_time = "2024-01-01 01:00"
	end_time   = "2024-01-02"

	s3downloader {
		region    = "us-west-1"
		s3_bucket = "mybucket"
		s3_prefix = "logs"
	}

	encoding {
		extension = otelcol.encoding.text.default.handler
		suffix    = ".txt"
	}

	output {
		logs = [otelcol.exporter.debug.default.input]
	}
}

otelcol.exporter.debug "default" {}
```