# Zipkin Exporter

<!-- status autogenerated section -->
| Status        |           |
| ------------- |-----------|
| Stability     | [beta]: traces   |
| Distributions | [core], [contrib], [observiq] |
| Issues        | [![Open issues](https://img.shields.io/github/issues-search/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib?query=is%3Aissue%20is%3Aopen%20label%3Aexporter%2Fzipkin%20&label=open&color=orange&logo=opentelemetry)](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+label%3Aexporter%2Fzipkin) [![Closed issues](https://img.shields.io/github/issues-search/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib?query=is%3Aissue%20is%3Aclosed%20label%3Aexporter%2Fzipkin%20&label=closed&color=blue&logo=opentelemetry)](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/issues?q=is%3Aclosed+is%3Aissue+label%3Aexporter%2Fzipkin) |
| [Code Owners](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md#becoming-a-code-owner)    | [@MovieStoreGuy](https://www.github.com/MovieStoreGuy), [@astencel-sumo](https://www.github.com/astencel-sumo), [@crobert-1](https://www.github.com/crobert-1) |

[beta]: https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector#beta
[core]: https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-releases/tree/main/distributions/otelcol
[contrib]: https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-releases/tree/main/distributions/otelcol-contrib
[observiq]: https://github.com/observIQ/observiq-otel-collector
<!-- end autogenerated section -->

Exports data to a [Zipkin](https://zipkin.io/) back-end.
By default, this exporter requires TLS and offers queued retry capabilities.

## Getting Started

The following settings are required:

- `endpoint` (no default): URL to which the exporter is going to send Zipkin trace data. For example: `http://localhost:9411/api/v2/spans`.

The following settings are optional:

- `format` (default = `json`): The format to sent events in. Can be set to `json` or `proto`.
- `default_service_name` (default = `<missing service name>`): What to name
  services missing this information.

To use TLS, specify `https://` as the protocol scheme in the URL passed to the `endpoint` property.
See [Advanced Configuration](#advanced-configuration) for more TLS options.

Example:

```yaml
exporters:
  zipkin/nontls:
    endpoint: "http://some.url:9411/api/v2/spans"
    format: proto
    default_service_name: unknown-service

  zipkin/withtls:
    endpoint: "https://some.url:9411/api/v2/spans"

  zipkin/tlsnoverify:
    endpoint: "https://some.url:9411/api/v2/spans"
    tls:
      insecure_skip_verify: true
```

## Advanced Configuration

Several helper files are leveraged to provide additional capabilities automatically:

- [HTTP client settings](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/blob/main/config/confighttp/README.md#client-configuration)
- [TLS and mTLS settings](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/blob/main/config/configtls/README.md)
- [Queuing, retry and timeout settings](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/blob/main/exporter/exporterhelper/README.md)