The Azure Blob Storage sink connector pulls data from Pulsar topics and persists data to Azure Blob Storage containers.
Quick start
Prerequisites
The prerequisites for connecting an Azure Blob Storage sink connector to external systems include:
- Create Blob Storage container in Azure Cloud.
- Get Storage account
Connection string
.
1. Create a connector
The following command shows how to use pulsarctl to create a builtin
connector. If you want to create a non-builtin
connector, you need to replace --sink-type cloud-storage-azure-blob
with --archive /path/to/pulsar-io-cloud-storage.nar
. You can find the button to download the nar
package at the beginning of the document.
For StreamNative Cloud User
If you are a StreamNative Cloud user, you need set up your environment first.
pulsarctl sinks create \
--sink-type cloud-storage-azure-blob \
--name azure-blob-sink \
--tenant public \
--namespace default \
--inputs "Your topic name" \
--parallelism 1 \
--sink-config \
'{
"azureStorageAccountConnectionString": "Your azure blob storage account connection string",
"provider": "azure-blob-storage",
"bucket": "Your container name",
"formatType": "json",
"partitioner": "topic"
}'
The --sink-config
is the minimum necessary configuration for starting this connector, and it is a JSON string. You need to substitute the relevant parameters with your own. If you want to configure more parameters, see Configuration Properties for reference.
Note
You can also choose to use a variety of other tools to create a connector:
- pulsar-admin: The command arguments for
pulsar-admin
are similar to those ofpulsarctl
. You can find an example for StreamNative Cloud Doc. - RestAPI: You can find an example for StreamNative Cloud Doc.
- Terraform: You can find an example for StreamNative Cloud Doc.
- Function Mesh: The docker image can be found at the beginning of the document.
2. Send messages to the topic
Note
If your connector is created on StreamNative Cloud, you need to authenticate your clients. See Build applications using Pulsar clients for more information.
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
PulsarClient client = PulsarClient.builder()
.serviceUrl("{{Your Pulsar URL}}")
.build();
Producer<String> producer = client.newProducer(Schema.STRING)
.topic("{{Your topic name}}")
.create();
for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
// JSON string containing a single character
String message = "{\"test-message\": \"test-value\"}";
producer.send(message);
}
producer.close();
client.close();
}
3. Display data on Azure Blob Storage console
You can see the object at public/default/{{Your topic name}}-partition-0/xxxx.json on the Azure Blob Storage console. Download and open it, the content is:
{"test-message":"test-value"}
{"test-message":"test-value"}
{"test-message":"test-value"}
{"test-message":"test-value"}
{"test-message":"test-value"}
{"test-message":"test-value"}
{"test-message":"test-value"}
{"test-message":"test-value"}
{"test-message":"test-value"}
{"test-message":"test-value"}
Configuration Properties
Before using the Azure Blob Storage sink connector, you need to configure it. This table outlines the properties and the descriptions.
Name | Type | Required | Sensitive | Default | Description |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
provider | String | True | false | null | The Cloud Storage type, Azure Blob Storage only supports the azure-blob-storage provider. |
bucket | String | True | false | null | The Azure Blob Storage container name. |
formatType | String | True | false | "json" | The data format type. Available options are json , avro , bytes , or parquet . By default, it is set to json . |
partitioner | String | False | false | null | The partitioner for partitioning the resulting files. Available options are topic , time or legacy . By default, it's set to legacy . Please see Partitioner for more details. |
partitionerType | String | False | false | null | The legacy partitioning type. It can be configured by topic partitions or by time. By default, the partition type is configured by topic partitions. It only works when the partitioner is set to legacy . |
azureStorageAccountSASToken | String | False | true | "" | The Azure Blob Storage account SAS token. Required when authenticating via SAS token. |
azureStorageAccountName | String | False | true | "" | The Azure Blob Storage account name. Required when authenticating via account name and account key. |
azureStorageAccountKey | String | False | true | "" | The Azure Blob Storage account key. Required when authenticating via account name and account key. |
endpoint | String | False | false | null | The Azure Blob Storage endpoint. Required when authenticating via account name or SAS token. |
timePartitionPattern | String | False | false | "yyyy-MM-dd" | The format pattern of the time-based partitioning. For details, refer to the Java date and time format. |
timePartitionDuration | String | False | false | "86400000" | The time interval for time-based partitioning. Support formatted interval string, such as 30d , 24h , 30m , 10s , and also support number in milliseconds precision, such as 86400000 refers to 24h or 1d . |
partitionerUseIndexAsOffset | Boolean | False | false | false | Whether to use the Pulsar's message index as offset or the record sequence. It's recommended if the incoming messages may be batched. The brokers may or not expose the index metadata and, if it's not present on the record, the sequence will be used. See PIP-70 for more details. |
batchSize | int | False | false | 10 | The number of records submitted in batch. |
batchTimeMs | long | False | false | 1000 | The interval for batch submission. |
maxBatchBytes | long | False | false | 10000000 | The maximum number of bytes in a batch. |
sliceTopicPartitionPath | Boolean | False | false | false | When it is set to true , split the partitioned topic name into separate folders in the bucket path. |
withMetadata | Boolean | False | false | false | Save message attributes to metadata. |
useHumanReadableMessageId | Boolean | False | false | false | Use a human-readable format string for messageId in message metadata. The messageId is in a format like ledgerId:entryId:partitionIndex:batchIndex . Otherwise, the messageId is a Hex-encoded string. |
withTopicPartitionNumber | Boolean | False | false | true | When it is set to true , include the topic partition number to the object path. |
bytesFormatTypeSeparator | String | False | false | "0x10" | It is inserted between records for the formatType of bytes. By default, it is set to '0x10'. An input record that contains the line separator looks like multiple records in the output object. |
pendingQueueSize | int | False | false | 10 | The number of records buffered in queue. By default, it is equal to batchSize . You can set it manually. |
useHumanReadableSchemaVersion | Boolean | False | false | false | Use a human-readable format string for the schema version in the message metadata. If it is set to true , the schema version is in plain string format. Otherwise, the schema version is in hex-encoded string format. |
skipFailedMessages | Boolean | False | false | false | Configure whether to skip a message which it fails to be processed. If it is set to true , the connector will skip the failed messages by ack it. Otherwise, the connector will fail the message. |
pathPrefix | String | False | false | false | If it is set, the output files are stored in a folder under the given bucket path. The pathPrefix must be in the format of xx/xxx/ . |
avroCodec | String | False | false | snappy | Compression codec used when formatType=avro . Available compression types are: none (no compression), deflate, bzip2, xz, zstandard, snappy. |
parquetCodec | String | False | false | gzip | Compression codec used when formatType=parquet . Available compression types are: none (no compression), snappy, gzip, lzo, brotli, lz4, zstd. |
jsonAllowNaN | Boolean | False | false | false | Recognize 'NaN', 'INF', '-INF' as legal floating number values when formatType=json . Since JSON specification does not allow such values this is a non-standard feature and disabled by default. |
includeTopicToMetadata | Boolean | False | false | false | Include the topic name to the metadata. |
There are three methods to authenticate with Azure Blob Storage:
azureStorageAccountConnectionString
: This method involves using the Azure Blob Storage connection string for authentication. It's the simplest method as it only requires the connection string.azureStorageAccountSASToken
: This method uses a Shared Access Signature (SAS) token for the Azure Blob Storage account. When using this method, you must also set theendpoint
.azureStorageAccountName
andazureStorageAccountKey
: This method uses the Azure Blob Storage account name and account key for authentication. Similar to the SAS token method, you must also set theendpoint
when using this method.
Advanced features
Data format types
Azure Blob Storage Sink Connector provides multiple output format options, including JSON, Avro, Bytes, or Parquet. The default format is JSON. With current implementation, there are some limitations for different formats:
This table lists the Pulsar Schema types supported by the writers.
Pulsar Schema | Writer: Avro | Writer: JSON | Writer: Parquet | Writer: Bytes |
---|---|---|---|---|
Primitive | ✗ | ✔ * | ✗ | ✔ |
Avro | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Json | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Protobuf ** | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
ProtobufNative | ✔ *** | ✗ | ✔ | ✔ |
*: The JSON writer will try to convert the data with a
String
orBytes
schema to JSON-format data if convertable.**: The Protobuf schema is based on the Avro schema. It uses Avro as an intermediate format, so it may not provide the best effort conversion.
***: The ProtobufNative record holds the Protobuf descriptor and the message. When writing to Avro format, the connector uses avro-protobuf to do the conversion.
This table lists the support of withMetadata
configurations for different writer formats:
Writer Format | withMetadata |
---|---|
Avro | ✔ |
JSON | ✔ |
Parquet | ✔ * |
Bytes | ✗ |
*: When using
Parquet
withPROTOBUF_NATIVE
format, the connector will write the messages withDynamicMessage
format. WhenwithMetadata
is set totrue
, the connector will add__message_metadata__
to the messages withPulsarIOCSCProtobufMessageMetadata
format.For example, if a message
User
has the following schema:syntax = "proto3"; message User { string name = 1; int32 age = 2; }
When
withMetadata
is set totrue
, the connector will write the messageDynamicMessage
with the following schema:syntax = "proto3"; message PulsarIOCSCProtobufMessageMetadata { map<string, string> properties = 1; string schema_version = 2; string message_id = 3; } message User { string name = 1; int32 age = 2; PulsarIOCSCProtobufMessageMetadata __message_metadata__ = 3; }
Dead-letter topics
To use a dead-letter topic, you need to set skipFailedMessages
to false
, and set --max-redeliver-count
and --dead-letter-topic
when submit the connector with the pulsar-admin
CLI tool. For more info about dead-letter topics, see the Pulsar documentation. If a message fails to be sent to the Azure Blob Storage and there is a dead-letter topic, the connector will send the message to the dead-letter topic.
Sink flushing only after batchTimeMs elapses
There is a scenario where the sink is only flushing whenever the batchTimeMs
has elapsed, even though there are many messages waiting to be processed. The reason for this is that the sink will only acknowledge messages after they are flushed to the Azure Blob Storage but the broker stops sending messages when it reaches a certain limit of unacknowledged messages. If this limit is lower or close to batchSize
, the sink never receives enough messages to trigger a flush based on the amount of messages. In this case please ensure the maxUnackedMessagesPerConsumer
set in the broker configuration is sufficiently larger than the batchSize
setting of the sink.
Partitioner
The partitioner is used for partitioning the data into different files in the cloud storage. There are three types of partitioner:
- Topic Partitioner: Messages are partitioned according to the pre-existing partitions in the Pulsar topics. For instance, a message for the topic
public/default/my-topic-partition-0
would be directed to the filepublic/default/my-topic-partition-0/xxx.json
, wherexxx
signifies the earliest message offset in this file. - Time Partitioner: Messages are partitioned based on the timestamp at the time of flushing. For the aforementioned message, it would be directed to the file
1703037311.json
, where1703037311
represents the flush timestamp of the first message in this file. - Legacy Partitioner: This type reverts to the old partitioner behavior. The legacy configuration
partitionerType
would be respected.
Legacy Partitioner
There are two types of legacy partitioner:
Simple partitioner: This is the default partitioning method based on Pulsar partitions. In other words, data is partitioned according to the pre-existing partitions in Pulsar topics. For instance, a message for the topic
public/default/my-topic-partition-0
would be directed to the filepublic/default/my-topic-partition-0/xxx.json
, wherexxx
signifies the earliest message offset in this file.Time partitioner: Data is partitioned according to the time it was flushed. Using the previous message as an example, if it was received on 2023-12-20, it would be directed to
public/default/my-topic-partition-0/2023-12-20/xxx.json
, wherexxx
also denotes the earliest message offset in this file.