Event Envelope

An event envelope is the shared metadata around an event’s business payload. It commonly carries event identity, name and version, source, timestamps and correlation identifiers. The exact field names depend on the protocol; an envelope is a design role, not a universal JSON standard.

For an order event, order_id and amount may be payload properties, while event_id identifies this occurrence and received_time records collector arrival. Different events about one order need different event identities. Declare the scope of each key; producer-local IDs may need a tenant or source prefix.

A source field saying server does not authenticate its sender. The collector should establish trusted identity and stamp its own arrival time. Validate top-level fields as well as nested properties. Preserve original timestamps because device clocks, buffering and retries can make occurrence time differ from arrival time.

Reference: Snowplow event timestamps.