windows_exporter/docs/collector.textfile.md

textfile collector

The textfile collector exposes metrics from files written by other processes.

Metric name prefix	textfile
Classes	None
Enabled by default?	No

Flags

--collector.textfile.directory

⚠️ DEPRECATED Use --collector.textfile.directories

--collector.textfile.directories

One or multiple directories containing the files to be ingested.

E.G. --collector.textfile.directories="C:\MyDir1,C:\MyDir2"

Default value: C:\Program Files\windows_exporter\textfile_inputs

Required: No

Note:

• If there are duplicated filenames among the directories, only the first one found will be read. For any other files with the same name, the windows_textfile_scrape_error metric will be set to 1 and a error message will be logged.
• Only files with the extension .prom are read. The .prom file must end with an empty line feed to work properly.

Metrics will primarily come from the files on disk. The below listed metrics are collected to give information about the reading of the metrics themselves.

Name	Description	Type	Labels
windows_textfile_scrape_error	1 if there was an error opening or reading a file, 0 otherwise	gauge	None
windows_textfile_mtime_seconds	Unix epoch-formatted mtime (modified time) of textfiles successfully read	gauge	file

Example metric

This collector does not yet have explained examples, we would appreciate your help adding them!

Useful queries

This collector does not yet have any useful queries added, we would appreciate your help adding them!

Alerting examples

This collector does not yet have alerting examples, we would appreciate your help adding them!

Example use

This Powershell script, when run in the --collector.textfile.directories (default C:\Program Files\windows_exporter\textfile_inputs), generates a valid .prom file that should successfully ingested by windows_exporter.

$alpha = 42
$beta = @{ left=3.1415; right=2.718281828; }

Set-Content -Path test1.prom -Encoding Ascii -NoNewline -Value ""
Add-Content -Path test1.prom -Encoding Ascii -NoNewline -Value "# HELP test_alpha_total Some random metric.`n"
Add-Content -Path test1.prom -Encoding Ascii -NoNewline -Value "# TYPE test_alpha_total counter`n"
Add-Content -Path test1.prom -Encoding Ascii -NoNewline -Value "test_alpha_total ${alpha}`n"
Add-Content -Path test1.prom -Encoding Ascii -NoNewline -Value "# HELP test_beta_bytes Some other metric.`n"
Add-Content -Path test1.prom -Encoding Ascii -NoNewline -Value "# TYPE test_beta_bytes gauge`n"
foreach ($k in $beta.Keys) {
  Add-Content -Path test1.prom -Encoding Ascii -NoNewline -Value "test_beta_bytes{spin=""${k}""} $( $beta[$k] )`n"
}