Pulsar Sink

Download connector Pulsar Connector for Kafka 2.1.0

The Pulsar Kafka Connector allows you to write events from Kafka to Apache Pulsar. The connector takes the value from the Kafka Connect SinkRecords and inserts a new entry to Pulsar.

Features

  1. The KCQL routing querying - Allows for the table to topic routing.
  2. Error polices for handling failures.
  3. Payload support for Schema.Struct and payload Struct, Schema.String and JSON payload and JSON payload with no schema.

KCQL Support

INSERT INTO pulsar_topic_name SELECT [, FIELDS...] FROM [TOPIC] kafka_topic_name

Tip

You can specify multiple KCQL statements separated by ; to have a the connector sink multiple topics.

The Apache Pulsar sink supports KCQL, Kafka Connect Query Language. The following support KCQL is available:

  1. Field selection
  2. Target Pulsar topic selection.

Examples:

# Select all fields
INSERT INTO persistent://landoop/standalone/connect/kafka-topic SELECT * FROM kafka_topic
# Select individual fields
INSERT INTO persistent://landoop/standalone/connect/kafka-topic SELECT id, product_name FROM kafka_topic

Payload Support

Schema.Struct and a Struct Payload

If you follow the best practice while producing the events, each message should carry its schema information. The best option is to send AVRO. Your Connector configurations options include:

key.converter=io.confluent.connect.avro.AvroConverter
key.converter.schema.registry.url=http://localhost:8081
value.converter=io.confluent.connect.avro.AvroConverter
value.converter.schema.registry.url=http://localhost:8081

This requires the SchemaRegistry.

Note

This needs to be done in the connect worker properties if using Kafka versions prior to 0.11

Schema.String and a JSON Payload

Sometimes the producer would find it easier to just send a message with Schema.String and a JSON string. In this case your connector configuration should be set to value.converter=org.apache.kafka.connect.json.JsonConverter. This doesn’t require the SchemaRegistry.

key.converter=org.apache.kafka.connect.json.JsonConverter
value.converter=org.apache.kafka.connect.json.JsonConverter

Note

This needs to be done in the connect worker properties if using Kafka versions prior to 0.11

No schema and a JSON Payload

There are many existing systems which are publishing JSON over Kafka and bringing them in line with best practices is quite a challenge, hence we added the support. To enable this support you must change the converters in the connector configuration.

key.converter=org.apache.kafka.connect.json.JsonConverter
key.converter.schemas.enable=false
value.converter=org.apache.kafka.connect.json.JsonConverter
value.converter.schemas.enable=false

Note

This needs to be done in the connect worker properties if using Kafka versions prior to 0.11

Error Polices

Lenses sink connectors support error polices. These error polices allow you to control the behavior of the sink if it encounters an error when writing records to the target system. Since Kafka retains the records, subject to the configured retention policy of the topic, the sink can ignore the error, fail the connector or attempt redelivery.

Throw Policy

Any error on write to the target system will be propagated up and processing is stopped. This is the default behavior.

No Operation Policy

Any error on write to the target database is ignored and processing continues.

Warning

This can lead to missed errors if you do not have adequate monitoring. Data is not lost as it is still in Kafka and subjects to Kafka’s retention policy. Currently, the Sink does not distinguish between integrity constraint violations and or other exceptions thrown by any drivers or target systems.

Retry Policy

Any error on write to the target system causes the RetryIterable exception to be thrown. This causes the Kafka connect framework to pause and replay the message. Offsets are not committed. For example, if the table is offline, it will cause a write failure and the message can be replayed. With the Retry policy, the issue can be fixed without stopping the sink.

Apache Pulsar Setup

The documentation for Pulsar is available here.

Download and extract the binary release:

wget http://www.apache.org/dist/incubator/pulsar/pulsar-1.21.0-incubating/apache-pulsar-1.21.0-incubating-bin.tar.gz
tar xvfz apache-pulsar-1.21.0-incubating-bin.tar.gz
cd apache-pulsar-1.21.0-incubating

Apache Pulsar requires Zookeeper, if you have Docker we recommend running Pulsar in a container.

docker run -it \
-p 6650:6650 \
-p 8080:8080 \
-v $PWD/data:/pulsar/data \
apachepulsar/pulsar:1.21.0-incubating \
bin/pulsar standalone --advertised-address 127.0.0.1

If you do not have Docker you can still run Pulsar locally and reuse the Zookeeper instances from you Kafka cluster. Pulsar uses Apache BookKeeper for persistence which stores Ledger details under /ledgers can is controlled via zkLedgersRootPath in the bookies config file. Using this approach you may see Zookeeper warnings in the Pulsar logs.

# start
bin/pulsar standalone

Warning

We recommend separate Zookeeper quorums for Kafka and Pulsar and do not advise you try this on Production!

If you wish to use a separate Zookeeper instance outside of Docker you will need to update the configuration files of Apache Pulsar in conf to start Zookeeper on a different ports please consult the Pulsar documentation.

Pulsar Console Consumer

To consumer message in Pulsar that the connector inserts lets start Pulsars console consumer and instruct it to waiting for records.

./pulsar-client \
    consume \
    persistent://landoop/standalone/connect/kafka-topic \
    --subscription-name lenses
    ---num-messages 0

Note the topic name, we will use this later in the connectors KCQL statement.

Installing the Connector

Connect, in production should be run in distributed mode

  1. Install and configure a Kafka Connect cluster.
  2. Create a folder on each server called plugins/lib.
  3. Copy into the above folder the required connector jars from the stream reactor download.
  4. Edit connect-avro-distributed.properties in the etc/schema-registry folder and uncomment the plugin.path option. Set it to the root directory i.e. plugins you deployed the stream reactor connector jars in step 2.
  5. Start Connect, bin/connect-distributed etc/schema-registry/connect-avro-distributed.properties.

Connect Workers are long running processes so set an init.d or systemctl service accordingly.

Source Connector QuickStart

Start Kafka Connect in distributed mode (see install). In this mode a Rest Endpoint on port 8083 is exposed to accept connector configurations. We developed Command Line Interface to make interacting with the Connect Rest API easier. The CLI can be found in the Stream Reactor download under the bin folder. Alternatively the Jar can be pulled from our GitHub releases page.

Starting the Connector

Download, and install Stream Reactor. Follow the instructions here if you haven’t already done so. All paths in the quickstart are based on the location you installed the Stream Reactor.

Once the Connect has started we can now use the kafka-connect-tools cli to post in our distributed properties file for MQTT. For the CLI to work including when using the dockers you will have to set the following environment variable to point the Kafka Connect Rest API.

export KAFKA_CONNECT_REST="http://myserver:myport"
➜  bin/connect-cli create pulsar-sink < conf/pulsar-sink.properties

name=pulsar-sink
connector.class=com.datamountaineer.streamreactor.connect.pulsar.sink.PulsarSinkConnector
tasks.max=1
topics=pulsar-kafka-topic
connect.pulsar.kcql=INSERT INTO persistent://landoop/standalone/connect/kafka-topic SELECT * FROM pulsar-kafka-topic
connect.pulsar.hosts=pulsar://localhost:6650
connect.pulsar.error.policy=THROW
connect.pulsar.max.retries=5
connect.progress.enabled=true

We can use the CLI to check if the connector is up but you should be able to see this in logs as well.

#check for running connectors with the CLI
➜ bin/connect-cli ps
pulsar-sink

In the logs of Connect you should see this:

  INFO
    __                    __
   / /   ____ _____  ____/ /___  ____  ____
  / /   / __ `/ __ \/ __  / __ \/ __ \/ __ \
 / /___/ /_/ / / / / /_/ / /_/ / /_/ / /_/ /
/_____/\__,_/_/ /_/\__,_/\____/\____/ .___/
                                   /_/
      ____        __                 _____ _       __
     / __ \__  __/ /________ ______ / ___/(_)___  / /__
    / /_/ / / / / / ___/ __ `/ ___/ \__ \/ / __ \/ //_/
   / ____/ /_/ / (__  ) /_/ / /    ___/ / / / / / ,<
  /_/    \__,_/_/____/\__,_/_/    /____/_/_/ /_/_/|_|

  v 1.0 (com.datamountaineer.streamreactor.connect.pulsar.sink.PulsarSinkTask:43)

Now we need to put some records it to the pulsar-kafka-topic. We can use the kafka-avro-console-producer to do this. Start the producer and pass in a schema to register in the Schema Registry.

Tip

If your input topic doesn’t match the target use Lenses SQL to transform in real-time the input, no Java or Scala required!

bin/kafka-avro-console-producer \
 --broker-list localhost:9092 --topic pulsar-kafka-topic \
 --property value.schema='{"type":"record","name":"myrecord","fields":[{"name":"id","type":"int"},{"name":"created","type":"string"},{"name":"product","type":"string"},{"name":"price","type":"double"}, {"name":"qty", "type":"int"}]}'

Now the producer is waiting for input. Paste in the following (each on a line separately):

{"id": 1, "created": "2016-05-06 13:53:00", "product": "OP-DAX-P-20150201-95.7", "price": 94.2, "qty":100}

Now if we check the logs of the connector we should see 2 records being inserted to Pulsar:

INFO Pulsar client config: {
"authentication" : {
    "authMethodName" : "none",
    "authData" : {
    "tlsCertificates" : null,
    "tlsPrivateKey" : null,
    "httpAuthType" : null,
    "httpHeaders" : null,
    "commandData" : null
    }
},
"operationTimeoutMs" : 30000,
"statsIntervalSeconds" : 60,
"connectionsPerBroker" : 1,
"useTcpNoDelay" : true,
"useTls" : false,
"tlsTrustCertsFilePath" : "",
"tlsAllowInsecureConnection" : false,
"concurrentLookupRequest" : 5000,
"maxNumberOfRejectedRequestPerConnection" : 50,
"ioThreads" : 1,
"listenerThreads" : 1
} (org.apache.pulsar.client.impl.ProducerStats:102)
INFO Received Broker lookup response: Connect (org.apache.pulsar.client.impl.ClientCnx:242)
INFO [persistent://landoop/standalone/connect/kafka-topic] [null] Creating producer on cnx [id: 0x1812a6c4, L:/127.0.0.1:59273 - R:localhost/127.0.0.1:6650] (org.apache.pulsar.client.impl.ProducerImpl:804)
INFO [persistent://landoop/standalone/connect/kafka-topic] [standalone-0-1] Created producer on cnx [id: 0x1812a6c4, L:/127.0.0.1:59273 - R:localhost/127.0.0.1:6650] (org.apache.pulsar.client.impl.ProducerImpl:825)
INFO Delivered 1 records for pulsar-kafka-topic

If we now check back in the terminal we started the Pulsar consumer:

----- got message -----
{"id":1,"created":"2016-05-06 13:53:00","product":"OP-DAX-P-20150201-95.7","price":94.2,"qty":100}

Configurations

Config Description Type Value
name Name of the connector string This must be unique across the Connect cluster
topics
The topics to sink.
The connector will check that this matches the KCQL statement
string  
tasks.max The number of tasks to scale output int 1
connector.class Name of the connector class string com.datamountaineer.streamreactor.connect.pulsar.sink.PulsarSinkConnector

Connector Configurations

Config Description Type
connect.pulsar.kcql
Contains the Kafka Connect Query Language
describing the flow from Apache Kafka to Apache Pulsar topics
string
connect.pulsar.hosts Contains the Pulsar connection end points string

Optional Configurations

Config Description Type Default
connect.pulsar.error.policy
Specifies the action to be
taken if an error occurs while inserting the data.
There are three available options, NOOP, the error
is swallowed, THROW, the error is allowed
to propagate and retry.
For RETRY the Kafka message is redelivered up
to a maximum number of times specified by the
connect.pulsar.max.retries option
string THROW
connect.pulsar.max.retries
The maximum number of times a message
is retried. Only valid when the
connect.pulsar.error.policy is set to RETRY
string 10
connect.pulsar.retry.interval
The interval, in milliseconds between retries,
if the sink is using
connect.pulsar.error.policy set to RETRY
string 60000
connect.progress.enabled
Enables the output for how many
records have been processed
boolean false
connect.pulsar.tls.ca.cert Provides the path to the CA certificate file to use with the Pulsar connection string  
connect.pulsar.tls.cert Provides the path to the certificate file to use with the Pulsar connection string  
connect.pulsar.tls.key Certificate private [config] key file path. string  

Kubernetes

Helm Charts are provided at our repo, add the repo to your Helm instance and install. We recommend using the Landscaper to manage Helm Values since typically each Connector instance has its own deployment.

Add the Helm charts to your Helm instance:

helm repo add landoop https://lensesio.github.io/kafka-helm-charts/

TroubleShooting

Please review the FAQs and join our slack channel