Parameter types are not respected in LogContextPipe

[Laurens-makel]

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Describe the issue
The LogContextPipe will put the value of each parameter in the ThreadContext. The values of the ThreadContext will be logged to -messages.json|log log files and can be used by tools such as Splunk or Grafana to search on these attributes.

In our OTEL experiment we've noticed that these values are always added to the ThreadContext as string values. The ThreadContext values are added to our traces as tags, however we cannot use numeric operators to find traces, i,e: mails.received > 0 because the values are always added as strings.

When looking at the underlying code, the problem becomes obvious. The parameter types are not checked....

I'd expect that when I specify a parameter with type="INTEGER" or type="BOOLEAN" that these are respected and are added to the ThreadContext with their corresponding java types..

[evandongen]

@Laurens-makel , the ThreadContext is based on a Map<String, String> (that means that the key and the value are a String). That's why we use pv.asStringVAlue() to conform to this. I don't see how we can change this for your needs because the ThreadContext is a class in the log4j library.

[Laurens-makel]

@Laurens-makel , the ThreadContext is based on a Map<String, String> (that means that the key and the value are a String). That's why we use pv.asStringVAlue() to conform to this. I don't see how we can change this for your needs because the ThreadContext is a class in the log4j library.

I'd like to include @nielsm5.

Hmm, I was quite sure that I investigated that this would be possible but I probably made a mistake. The current implementation of ThreadContext is indeed String based.

However... I'd like to refer to these links:
https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LOG4J2-1648
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/77876650/how-to-produce-json-logs-with-numeric-values-in-java-web-application

It seems that this is a known issue and will be implemented in an upcoming release:

Seems they are about to release soon?

[evandongen]

@Laurens-makel , I'll move this ticket to the backlog. We can investigate this again when Log4j 2.24.0 is released. Thanks for the heads up!