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Live Ingest Quickstart

Start a local OTLP/HTTP endpoint, POST one log record, and query it from DuckDB.

This quickstart requires the native extension. WASM builds do not include the ingest server. Live ingestion uses HTTP.

Step 1: Start the server

Section titled “Step 1: Start the server”

From a DuckDB shell with the extension loaded:

INSTALL otlp FROM community;
LOAD otlp;


SELECT listen_url, auth_token
FROM otlp_serve('otlp:localhost:4318', token := 'dev-token-123456');

Output:

┌────────────────────────┬──────────────────┐
│       listen_url       │    auth_token    │
├────────────────────────┼──────────────────┤
│ http://localhost:4318  │ dev-token-123456 │
└────────────────────────┴──────────────────┘

Leave this DuckDB session running. With no catalog parameter, rows land in the connection’s default catalog: in memory, or in the DuckDB file you opened.

Step 2: POST one log

Section titled “Step 2: POST one log”

In another terminal:

Terminal window
curl -sS http://localhost:4318/v1/logs \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer dev-token-123456' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"resourceLogs":[{"resource":{"attributes":[{"key":"service.name","value":{"stringValue":"curl-demo"}}]},"scopeLogs":[{"logRecords":[{"timeUnixNano":"1704067200000000000","severityText":"INFO","body":{"stringValue":"hello from curl"}}]}]}]}'

Response:

{"status":"buffered","rows":1,"batches":1}

A 202 Accepted with "status":"buffered" means the server parsed the row and accepted it into the in-memory buffer. You can query it after the next background commit, after otlp_stop, or after otlp_flush.

You can confirm the server is up without auth:

Terminal window
curl -sS http://localhost:4318/healthz
# {"status":"ok"}
curl -sS http://localhost:4318/readyz
# {"status":"ready"}

Step 3: Stop and query

Section titled “Step 3: Stop and query”

Back in DuckDB, stop the server before closing the database:

SELECT status FROM otlp_stop('otlp:localhost:4318');

otlp_stop commits remaining buffered rows before it returns, so an explicit otlp_flush is not required for this quickstart.

Now query the accepted row:

SELECT time_unix_nano, service_name, severity_text, body
FROM otlp_logs;
┌─────────────────────┬──────────────┬───────────────┬─────────────────┐
│   time_unix_nano    │ service_name │ severity_text │      body       │
├─────────────────────┼──────────────┼───────────────┼─────────────────┤
│ 2024-01-01 00:00:00 │ curl-demo    │ INFO          │ hello from curl │
└─────────────────────┴──────────────┴───────────────┴─────────────────┘

Next steps

Section titled “Next steps”