Add and Remove operators should support an array of things to add or remove

[Dylan-M]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
Currently I have to specify multiple removes, with defined IDs, in order to remove 3 fields that I combined into a single field.

Describe the solution you'd like
Allow an array to be passed, such as we do with other operators, of fields to add or remove

Describe alternatives you've considered
Currently using multiple entries for remove. Each requires an ID in order to be unique.

[djaglowski]

I agree with this idea for remove, but I don't see how exactly it would work with add.

The remove change would be a welcome contribution to opentelemetry-log-collection as well.

To clarify my expectations, the following should be allowed:

type: remove
field: myfield1

type: remove
field: 
  - myfield1
  - myfield2

[Dylan-M]

Yes, I've been thinking about how to format the add for an array, and I could only come up with 2 solutions.

Solution 1:

type: add
field:
  - key
  - value
field:
  - key
  - value

Essentially allowing field to appear multiple times.

Solution 2:

type: add
field:
  - key1
  - key2
  - key3
value:
  - value1
  - value2
  - value3

Such that key1-value1 are paired together, and so on.

[djaglowski]

Unfortunately, I don't think solution 1 is possible due to the nature of yaml and the map structure it represents.

Solution 2 is generally considered an antipattern, as it requires the user to make implicit connections between values. As soon as there are more than a handful of values, it becomes very difficult to understand what is happening.

[Dylan-M]

Unfortunately, I don't think solution 1 is possible due to the nature of yaml and the map structure it represents.

Solution 2 is generally considered an antipattern, as it requires the user to make implicit connections between values. As soon as there are more than a handful of values, it becomes very difficult to understand what is happening.

Yeah, I should have added neither is a good solution. Just the only 2 that come to mind. Which is unfortunate, but it is what it is. Remove really is the important one here anyway. At least for my use case. We used add to combine several fields into a single one with formatting. Then removed all the fields that we had combined.