Samza: Delay processing of messages until timestamp - apache-kafka

I'm processing messages from a Kafka topic with Samza. Some of the messages come with a timestamp in the future and I'd like to postpone the processing until after that timestamp. In the meantime, I'd like to keep processing other incoming messages.
What I tried to do is make my Task queue the messages and implement the WindowableTask to periodically check the messages if their timestamp allows to process them. The basic idea looks like this:
public class MyTask implements StreamTask, WindowableTask {
private HashSet<MyMessage> waitingMessages = new HashSet<>();
#Override
public void process(IncomingMessageEnvelope incomingMessageEnvelope, MessageCollector messageCollector, TaskCoordinator taskCoordinator) {
byte[] message = (byte[]) incomingMessageEnvelope.getMessage();
MyMessage parsedMessage = MyMessage.parseFrom(message);
if (parsedMessage.getValidFromDateTime().isBeforeNow()) {
// Do the processing
} else {
waitingMessages.add(parsedMessage);
}
}
#Override
public void window(MessageCollector messageCollector, TaskCoordinator taskCoordinator) {
for (MyMessage message : waitingMessages) {
if (message.getValidFromDateTime().isBeforeNow()) {
// Do the processing and remove the message from the set
}
}
}
}
This obviously has some downsides. I'd be losing my waiting messages in memory when I redeploy my task. So I'd like to know the best practice for delaying the processing of messages with Samza. Do I need to reemit the messages to the same topic again and again until I can finally process them? We're talking about delaying the processing for a few minutes up to 1-2 hours here.

It's important to keep in mind, when dealing with message queues, is that they perform a very specific function in a system: they hold messages while the processor(s) are busy processing preceding messages. It is expected that a properly-functioning message queue will deliver messages on demand. What this implies is that as soon as a message reaches the head of the queue, the next pull on the queue will yield the message.
Notice that delay is not a configurable part of the equation. Instead, delay is an output variable of a system with a queue. In fact, Little's Law offers some interesting insights into this.
So, in a system where a delay is necessary (for example, to join/wait for a parallel operation to complete), you should be looking at other methods. Typically a queryable database would make sense in this particular instance. If you find yourself keeping messages in a queue for a pre-set period of time, you're actually using the message queue as a database - a function it was not designed to provide. Not only is this risky, but it also has a high likelihood of hurting the performance of your message broker.

I think you could use key-value store of Samza to keep state of your task instance instead of in-memory Set.
It should look something like:
public class MyTask implements StreamTask, WindowableTask, InitableTask {
private KeyValueStore<String, MyMessage> waitingMessages;
#SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
#Override
public void init(Config config, TaskContext context) throws Exception {
this.waitingMessages = (KeyValueStore<String, MyMessage>) context.getStore("messages-store");
}
#Override
public void process(IncomingMessageEnvelope incomingMessageEnvelope, MessageCollector messageCollector,
TaskCoordinator taskCoordinator) {
byte[] message = (byte[]) incomingMessageEnvelope.getMessage();
MyMessage parsedMessage = MyMessage.parseFrom(message);
if (parsedMessage.getValidFromDateTime().isBefore(LocalDate.now())) {
// Do the processing
} else {
waitingMessages.put(parsedMessage.getId(), parsedMessage);
}
}
#Override
public void window(MessageCollector messageCollector, TaskCoordinator taskCoordinator) {
KeyValueIterator<String, MyMessage> all = waitingMessages.all();
while(all.hasNext()) {
MyMessage message = all.next().getValue();
// Do the processing and remove the message from the set
}
}
}
If you redeploy you task Samza should recreate state of key-value store (Samza keeps values in special kafka topic related to key-value store). You need of course provide some extra configuration of your store (in above example for messages-store).
You could read about key-value store here (for the latest Samza version):
https://samza.apache.org/learn/documentation/0.14/container/state-management.html

Related

Kafka Streams - Transformers with State in Fields and Task / Threading Model

I have a Transformer with a state store that uses punctuate to operate on said state store.
After a few iterations of punctuate, the operation may have finished, so I'd like to cancel the punctuate -- but only for the Task that has actually finished the operation on the partition's respective state store. The punctuate operations for the Tasks that are not done yet should keep running. To that purpose my transformer keeps a reference to the Cancellable returned by schedule().
As far as I can tell, every Task always gets its own isolated Transformer instance and every Task gets its own isolated scheduled punctuate() within that instance (?)
However, since this is effectively state, but not inside a stateStore, I'm not sure how safe this is. For instance, are there certain scenarios in which one transformer instance might be shared across tasks (and therefore absolutely no state must be kept outside of StateStores)?
public class CoolTransformer implements Transformer {
private KeyValueStore stateStore;
private Cancellable taskPunctuate; // <----- Will this lead to conflicts between tasks?
public void init(ProcessorContext context) {
this.store = context.getStateStore(...);
this.taskPunctuate = context.schedule(Duration.ofMillis(...), PunctuationType.WALL_CLOCK_TIME, this::scheduledOperation);
}
private void scheduledOperation(long l) {
stateStore.get(...)
// do stuff...
if (done) {
this.taskPunctuate.cancel(); // <----- Will this lead to conflicts between tasks?
}
}
public KeyValue transform(key, value) {
// do stuff
stateStore.put(key, value)
}
public void close() {
taskPunctuate.cancel();
}
}
You might be able to look into TransformerSupplier, specifically TransformSupplier#get(), this will ensure that ensure we new transformer will be created for when they should be kept independent. Also the Transformers should not share objects, so be careful of this with your Cancellable taskPunctuate. If either of these cases are violated you should see errors like org.apache.kafka.streams.errors.StreamsException: Current node is unknown, ConcurrentModificationException or InstanceAlreadyExistsException.

KafkaMessageListenerContainer.stop() is not stopping consumption of messages in message listener

UseCase: Given topic with 100 messages in kafka topic, I want to read messaged from offset 10 to offset 20. I could able to fetch from beginning offset. when i reach end offset, I have written code to stop the container.Even after execution of code, Consumer can consume further messages(from offset 21).It only stops after reading all messages in the topic
#Service
public class Consumer1 implements MessageListener<String, GenericRecord> {
#Override
public void onMessage(ConsumerRecord<String, GenericRecord> data) {
log.info("feed record {}", data);
if (data.offset() == 20) {
feedService.stopConsumer();
}
}
}
#Service
public class FeedService{
// start logic here
public void stopConsumer() {
kafkaMessageListenerContainer.stop();
}
}
Note: I am using spring-kafka latest version(2.6.4). One observation is container stop method is being executed but consumer is not getting closed.And no errors on output
The stop() doesn't terminate the current records batch cycle:
while (isRunning()) {
try {
pollAndInvoke();
}
catch (#SuppressWarnings(UNUSED) WakeupException e) {
// Ignore, we're stopping or applying immediate foreign acks
}
That pollAndInvoke() calls a KafkaConsumer.poll(), gets some records collection and invokes your onMessage() on each record. At some point you decide to call the stop, but it doesn't mean that we are really in the end of that records list to exit immediately.
We really stop on the next cycle when that isRunning() returns false for us already.

How to handle backpressure when using Reactor Kafka?

I'm using Reactor Kafka to both consume and produce Kafka events. In the case of consuming events my consumer is slow and therefor I need to handle backpressure.
However, I experience that no matter what I call Subscription.request() with, the publisher will publish all events from the topic immediately, therefor overwhelming the consumer.
I'm using a custom Subscriber, setting a small number of initial request by calling Subscription.request(), when I subscribe to KafkaReceiver.receive() to do this. To my understanding this is how I tell the publisher how many events my consumer initially wants.
My subscriber:
public class KafkaEventSubscriber extends BaseSubscriber {
private final int numberOfItemsToRequestOnSubscribe;
private final int numberOfItemsToRequestOnNext;
public KafkaEventSubscriber(int numberOfItemsToRequestOnSubscribe,
int numberOfItemsToRequestOnNext) {
this.numberOfItemsToRequestOnSubscribe = numberOfItemsToRequestOnSubscribe;
this.numberOfItemsToRequestOnNext = numberOfItemsToRequestOnNext;
}
#Override
protected void hookOnSubscribe(Subscription subscription) {
subscription.request(numberOfItemsToRequestOnSubscribe);
}
#Override
protected void hookOnNext(EnrichedMetadata value) {
request(numberOfItemsToRequestOnNext);
}
}
How I use the subscriber:
kafkaReceiver.receive().map(ReceiverRecord::value).map(KafkaConsumer::acknowledge).subscribe(new KafkaEventSubscriber(10, 1));
I expect the KafkaReceiver to output 10 events before any call to the subscribers onNext() method is done, but the KafkaReceiver outputs all events that are not already ACK:ed from the topic.
I experience that no matter what we call Subscription.request() with, the publisher will publish all events from the topic immediately, not respecting the backpressure measures I've been taking.

Detecting abandoned processess in Kafka Streams 2.0

I have this case: users collect orders as order lines. I implemented this with Kafka topic containing events with order changes, they are merged, stored in local key-value store and broadcasted as second topic with order versions.
I need to somehow react to abandoned orders - ones that were started but there was no change for at least last x hours.
Simple solution could be to scan local storage every y minutes and post event of order status change to Abandoned. It seems I cannot access store not from processor... But it is also not very elegant coding. Any suggestions are welcome.
--edit
I cannot just add puctuation to merge/validation transformer, because its output is different and should be routed elsewhere, like on this image (single kafka streams app):
so "abandoned orders processor/transformer" will be a no-op for its input (the only trigger here is time). Another thing is that i such case (as on image) my transformer gets ForwardingDisabledProcessorContext upon initialization so I cannot emit any messages in punctuator. I could just pass there kafkaTemplate bean and just produce new messages, but then whole processor/transformer is just empty shell only to access local store...
this is snippet of code I used:
public class AbandonedOrdersTransformer implements ValueTransformer<OrderEvent, OrderEvent> {
#Override
public void init(ProcessorContext processorContext) {
this.context = processorContext;
stateStore = (KeyValueStore)processorContext.getStateStore(KafkaConfig.OPENED_ORDERS_STORE);
//main scheduler
this.context.schedule(TimeUnit.MINUTES.toMillis(5), PunctuationType.WALL_CLOCK_TIME, (timestamp) -> {
KeyValueIterator<String, Order> iter = this.stateStore.all();
while (iter.hasNext()) {
KeyValue<String, Order> entry = iter.next();
if(OrderStatuses.NEW.equals(entry.value.getStatus()) &&
(timestamp - entry.value.getLastChanged().getTime()) > TimeUnit.HOURS.toMillis(4)) {
//SEND ABANDON EVENT "event"
context.forward(entry.key, event);
}
}
iter.close();
context.commit();
});
}
#Override
public OrderEvent transform(OrderEvent orderEvent) {
//do nothing
return null;
}
#Override
public void close() {
//do nothing
}
}

How to access memcached asynchronously in netty

I am writing a server in netty, in which I need to make a call to memcached. I am using spymemcached and can easily do the synchronous memcached call. I would like this memcached call to be async. Is that possible? The examples provided with netty do not seem to be helpful.
I tried using callbacks: created a ExecutorService pool in my Handler and submitted a callback worker to this pool. Like this:
public class MyHandler extends ChannelInboundMessageHandlerAdapter<MyPOJO> implements CallbackInterface{
...
private static ExecutorService pool = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(20);
#Override
public void messageReceived(ChannelHandlerContext ctx, MyPOJO pojo) {
...
CallingbackWorker worker = new CallingbackWorker(key, this);
pool.submit(worker);
...
}
public void myCallback() {
//get response
this.ctx.nextOutboundMessageBuf().add(response);
}
}
CallingbackWorker looks like:
public class CallingbackWorker implements Callable {
public CallingbackWorker(String key, CallbackInterface c) {
this.c = c;
this.key = key;
}
public Object call() {
//get value from key
c.myCallback(value);
}
However, when I do this, this.ctx.nextOutboundMessageBuf() in myCallback gets stuck.
So, overall, my question is: how to do async memcached calls in Netty?
There are two problems here: a small-ish issue with the way you're trying to code this, and a bigger one with many libraries that provide async service calls, but no good way to take full advantage of them in an async framework like Netty. That forces users into suboptimal hacks like this one, or a less-bad, but still not ideal approach I'll get to in a moment.
First the coding problem. The issue is that you're trying to call a ChannelHandlerContext method from a thread other than the one associated with your handler, which is not allowed. That's pretty easy to fix, as shown below. You could code it a few other ways, but this is probably the most straightforward:
private static ExecutorService pool = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(20);
public void channelRead(final ChannelHandlerContext ctx, final Object msg) {
//...
final GetFuture<String> future = memcachedClient().getAsync("foo", stringTranscoder());
// first wait for the response on a pool thread
pool.execute(new Runnable() {
public void run() {
String value;
Exception err;
try {
value = future.get(3, TimeUnit.SECONDS); // or whatever timeout you want
err = null;
} catch (Exception e) {
err = e;
value = null;
}
// put results into final variables; compiler won't let us do it directly above
final fValue = value;
final fErr = err;
// now process the result on the ChannelHandler's thread
ctx.executor().execute(new Runnable() {
public void run() {
handleResult(fValue, fErr);
}
});
}
});
// note that we drop through to here right after calling pool.execute() and
// return, freeing up the handler thread while we wait on the pool thread.
}
private void handleResult(String value, Exception err) {
// handle it
}
That will work, and might be sufficient for your application. But you've got a fixed-sized thread pool, so if you're ever going to handle much more than 20 concurrent connections, that will become a bottleneck. You could increase the pool size, or use an unbounded one, but at that point, you might as well be running under Tomcat, as memory consumption and context-switching overhead start to become issues, and you lose the scalabilty that was the attraction of Netty in the first place!
And the thing is, Spymemcached is NIO-based, event-driven, and uses just one thread for all its work, yet provides no way to fully take advantage of its event-driven nature. I expect they'll fix that before too long, just as Netty 4 and Cassandra have recently by providing callback (listener) methods on Future objects.
Meanwhile, being in the same boat as you, I researched the alternatives, and not being too happy with what I found, I wrote (yesterday) a Future tracker class that can poll up to thousands of Futures at a configurable rate, and call you back on the thread (Executor) of your choice when they complete. It uses just one thread to do this. I've put it up on GitHub if you'd like to try it out, but be warned that it's still wet, as they say. I've tested it a lot in the past day, and even with 10000 concurrent mock Future objects, polling once a millisecond, its CPU utilization is negligible, though it starts to go up beyond 10000. Using it, the example above looks like this:
// in some globally-accessible class:
public static final ForeignFutureTracker FFT = new ForeignFutureTracker(1, TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS);
// in a handler class:
public void channelRead(final ChannelHandlerContext ctx, final Object msg) {
// ...
final GetFuture<String> future = memcachedClient().getAsync("foo", stringTranscoder());
// add a listener for the Future, with a timeout in 2 seconds, and pass
// the Executor for the current context so the callback will run
// on the same thread.
Global.FFT.addListener(future, 2, TimeUnit.SECONDS, ctx.executor(),
new ForeignFutureListener<String,GetFuture<String>>() {
public void operationSuccess(String value) {
// do something ...
ctx.fireChannelRead(someval);
}
public void operationTimeout(GetFuture<String> f) {
// do something ...
}
public void operationFailure(Exception e) {
// do something ...
}
});
}
You don't want more than one or two FFT instances active at any time, or they could become a drain on CPU. But a single instance can handle thousands of outstanding Futures; about the only reason to have a second one would be to handle higher-latency calls, like S3, at a slower polling rate, say 10-20 milliseconds.
One drawback of the polling approach is that it adds a small amount of latency. For example, polling once a millisecond, on average it will add 500 microseconds to the response time. That won't be an issue for most applications, and I think is more than offset by the memory and CPU savings over the thread pool approach.
I expect within a year or so this will be a non-issue, as more async clients provide callback mechanisms, letting you fully leverage NIO and the event-driven model.