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Connect to Apache Kafka

Apache Kafka is a distributed, replayable messaging system. It is a great fit for building a fault-tolerant data pipeline with Hazelcast.

Let’s build a data pipeline that receives an event stream from Kafka and computes its traffic intensity (events per second).

1. Start Apache Kafka

If you don’t have it already, install and run Kafka. You can use these instructions (you need just steps 1 and 2).

From now on we assume Kafka is running on your machine.

2. Start Hazelcast

  1. Download Hazelcast.

    If you already have Hazelcast, and you skipped the above steps, make sure to follow from here on (just check that hazelcast-jet-kafka-5.4.1.jar is in the lib/ directory of your distribution, because you might have the slim distribution).

  2. Start Hazelcast:

    bin/hz-start
  3. When you see output like this, Hazelcast is up:

    Members {size:1, ver:1} [
        Member [192.168.1.5]:5701 - e7c26f7c-df9e-4994-a41d-203a1c63480e this
    ]

From now on we assume Hazelcast is running on your machine.

3. Create a New Java Project

We’ll assume you’re using an IDE. Create a blank Java project named kafka-tutorial and copy the Gradle or Maven file into it:

  • Gradle

  • Maven

plugins {
    id 'java'
}

group 'org.example'
version '1.0-SNAPSHOT'

repositories.mavenCentral()

dependencies {
    implementation 'com.hazelcast:hazelcast:5.4.1'
    implementation 'com.hazelcast.jet:hazelcast-jet-kafka:5.4.1'
}

jar.manifest.attributes 'Main-Class': 'org.example.JetJob'
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

    <groupId>org.example</groupId>
    <artifactId>kafka-tutorial</artifactId>
    <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>

    <properties>
        <maven.compiler.target>1.8</maven.compiler.target>
        <maven.compiler.source>1.8</maven.compiler.source>
    </properties>

    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>com.hazelcast</groupId>
            <artifactId>hazelcast</artifactId>
            <version>5.4.1</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>com.hazelcast.jet</groupId>
            <artifactId>hazelcast-jet-kafka</artifactId>
            <version>5.4.1</version>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>

    <build>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
                <artifactId>maven-jar-plugin</artifactId>
                <configuration>
                    <archive>
                        <manifest>
                            <mainClass>org.example.JetJob</mainClass>
                        </manifest>
                    </archive>
                </configuration>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </build>
</project>

4. Publish an Event Stream to Kafka

This code publishes "tweets" (just some simple strings) to a Kafka topic tweets, with varying intensity:

package org.example;

import org.apache.kafka.clients.producer.*;
import org.apache.kafka.common.serialization.*;

import java.util.Properties;

public class TweetPublisher {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        String topicName = "tweets";
        try (KafkaProducer<Long, String> producer = new KafkaProducer<>(kafkaProps())) {
            for (long eventCount = 0; ; eventCount++) {
                String tweet = String.format("tweet-%0,4d", eventCount);
                producer.send(new ProducerRecord<>(topicName, eventCount, tweet));
                System.out.format("Published '%s' to Kafka topic '%s'%n", tweet, topicName);
                Thread.sleep(20 * (eventCount % 20));
            }
        }
    }

    private static Properties kafkaProps() {
        Properties props = new Properties();
        props.setProperty("bootstrap.servers", "localhost:9092");
        props.setProperty("key.serializer", LongSerializer.class.getCanonicalName());
        props.setProperty("value.serializer", StringSerializer.class.getCanonicalName());
        return props;
    }
}

Run it from your IDE. You should see this in the output:

Published 'tweet-0001' to Kafka topic 'tweets'
Published 'tweet-0002' to Kafka topic 'tweets'
Published 'tweet-0003' to Kafka topic 'tweets'
...

Let it run in the background while we go on to creating the next class.

5. Use Hazelcast to Analyze the Event Stream

This code lets Hazelcast connect to Kafka and show how many events per second were published to the Kafka topic at a given time:

package org.example;

import com.hazelcast.core.Hazelcast;
import com.hazelcast.core.HazelcastInstance;
import com.hazelcast.jet.*;
import com.hazelcast.jet.config.JobConfig;
import com.hazelcast.jet.kafka.KafkaSources;
import com.hazelcast.jet.pipeline.*;
import org.apache.kafka.common.serialization.*;

import java.time.*;
import java.time.format.DateTimeFormatter;
import java.util.Properties;

import static com.hazelcast.jet.aggregate.AggregateOperations.counting;
import static com.hazelcast.jet.pipeline.WindowDefinition.sliding;

public class JetJob {
    static final DateTimeFormatter TIME_FORMATTER =
            DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("HH:mm:ss:SSS");

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        Pipeline p = Pipeline.create();
        p.readFrom(KafkaSources.kafka(kafkaProps(), "tweets"))
         .withNativeTimestamps(0)
         .window(sliding(1_000, 500))
         .aggregate(counting())
         .writeTo(Sinks.logger(wr -> String.format(
                 "At %s Kafka got %,d tweets per second",
                 TIME_FORMATTER.format(LocalDateTime.ofInstant(
                         Instant.ofEpochMilli(wr.end()), ZoneId.systemDefault())),
                 wr.result())));

        JobConfig cfg = new JobConfig().setName("kafka-traffic-monitor");
        HazelcastInstance hz = Hazelcast.bootstrappedInstance();
        hz.getJet().newJob(p, cfg);
    }

    private static Properties kafkaProps() {
        Properties props = new Properties();
        props.setProperty("bootstrap.servers", "localhost:9092");
        props.setProperty("key.deserializer", LongDeserializer.class.getCanonicalName());
        props.setProperty("value.deserializer", StringDeserializer.class.getCanonicalName());
        props.setProperty("auto.offset.reset", "earliest");
        return props;
    }
}

You may run this code from your IDE, and it will work, but it will create its own Hazelcast member. To run it on the Hazelcast member you already started, use the command line like this:

  • Gradle

  • Maven

gradle build
<path_to_jet>/bin/hz-cli submit build/libs/kafka-tutorial-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar
mvn package
<path_to_jet>/bin/hz-cli submit target/kafka-tutorial-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar

Now go to the window where you started Hazelcast. Its log output will contain the output from the pipeline.

If TweetPublisher was running while you were following these steps, you’ll now get a report on the whole history and then a steady stream of real-time updates. If you restart this program, you’ll get all the history again. That’s how Hazelcast behaves when working with a replayable source.

Sample output:

16:11:35.033 ... At 16:11:27:500 Kafka got 3 tweets per second
16:11:35.034 ... At 16:11:28:000 Kafka got 2 tweets per second
16:11:35.034 ... At 16:11:28:500 Kafka got 8 tweets per second

Once you’re done with it, cancel the job:

<path_to_jet>/bin/hz-cli cancel kafka-traffic-monitor