springboot-kafka-connect-debezium-ksqldb

The goal of this project is to explore Kafka, Debezium, and ksqlDB. The project includes: research-service, which performs CRUD operations on records in MySQL; Source Connectors that monitor changes in MySQL and push related messages to Kafka; Sink Connectors and kafka-research-consumer that listen to Kafka messages and update documents in Elasticsearch; and ksqlDB-Server, which listens to Kafka topics, performs joins, and pushes new messages to Kafka.

Proof-of-Concepts & Articles

On ivangfr.github.io, I have compiled my Proof-of-Concepts (PoCs) and articles. You can easily search for the technology you are interested in by using the filter. Who knows, perhaps I have already implemented a PoC or written an article about what you are looking for.

Additional Readings

• [Medium] Streaming MySQL changes to Elasticsearch using Kafka Connect
• [Medium] Enhancing a MySQL-KafkaConnect-Elasticsearch Setup with Spring Boot Applications

Project Diagram

Applications

• research-service

  Monolithic Spring Boot application that exposes a REST API to manage Institutes, Articles, Researchers and Reviews. The data is saved in MySQL.

  

• kafka-research-consumer

  Spring Boot application that listens messages from the topic reviews_researchers_institutes_articles (that is one of ksqlDB outputs) and save the payload of those messages (i.e, reviews with detailed information) in Elasticsearch.

Prerequisites

• Java 21 or higher;
• A containerization tool (e.g., Docker, Podman, etc.)

Start Environment

• Open a terminal and, inside the springboot-kafka-connect-debezium-ksqldb root folder, run the following command

  docker compose up -d

  Note: During the first run, Docker images for mysql and kafka-connect will be built with the names springboot-kafka-connect-debezium-ksqldb_mysql and springboot-kafka-connect-debezium-ksqldb_kafka-connect, respectively. To rebuild these images, run:

  docker compose build

• Wait for all Docker containers to be up and running. To check it, run

  docker ps -a

Create Kafka Topics

In order to have topics in Kafka with more than 1 partition, we must create them manually and not wait for the connectors to create for us. So, for it

• In a terminal, make sure you are in the springboot-kafka-connect-debezium-ksqldb root folder

• Run the script below

  ./create-kafka-topics.sh

  It will create the topics mysql.researchdb.institutes, mysql.researchdb.researchers, mysql.researchdb.articles and mysql.researchdb.reviews with 5 partitions.

Create connectors (3/4)

• In a terminal, make sure you are in the springboot-kafka-connect-debezium-ksqldb root folder

• Run the following curl commands to create one Debezium and two Elasticsearch-Sink connectors in kafka-connect

  curl -i -X POST localhost:8083/connectors -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d @connectors/debezium-mysql-source-researchdb.json
  curl -i -X POST localhost:8083/connectors -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d @connectors/elasticsearch-sink-institutes.json
  curl -i -X POST localhost:8083/connectors -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d @connectors/elasticsearch-sink-articles.json

• You can check the state of the connectors and their tasks on Kafka Connect UI (http://localhost:8086) or calling kafka-connect endpoint

  curl localhost:8083/connectors/debezium-mysql-source-researchdb/status
  curl localhost:8083/connectors/elasticsearch-sink-institutes/status
  curl localhost:8083/connectors/elasticsearch-sink-articles/status

• The state of the connectors and their tasks must be RUNNING. If there is any problem, you can check kafka-connect container logs.

  docker logs kafka-connect

Run research-service

• Open a new terminal and navigate to the springboot-kafka-connect-debezium-ksqldb root folder

• Run the command below to start the application

  ./mvnw clean spring-boot:run --projects research-service -Dspring-boot.run.jvmArguments="-Dserver.port=9080"

  It will create some articles, institutes and researchers. If you don't want it, just set to false the properties load-samples.articles.enabled, load-samples.institutes.enabled and load-samples.researchers.enabled in application.yml.

• The Swagger link is http://localhost:9080/swagger-ui.html

• Important: create at least one review so that mysql.researchdb.reviews-key and mysql.researchdb.reviews-value are created in Schema Registry. Below there is a sample request to create a review.

  curl -i -X POST localhost:9080/api/reviews \
    -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
    -d "{ \"researcherId\": 1, \"articleId\": 1, \"comment\": \"Ln 56: replace the 'a' by 'an'\"}"

Run ksqlDB-cli

• Open a new terminal and, inside the springboot-kafka-connect-debezium-ksqldb root folder, run the docker command below to start ksqlDB-cli

  docker run -it --rm --name ksqldb-cli \
    --network springboot-kafka-connect-debezium-ksqldb_default \
    -v $PWD/docker/ksql/researchers-institutes.ksql:/tmp/researchers-institutes.ksql \
    -v $PWD/docker/ksql/reviews-researchers-institutes-articles.ksql:/tmp/reviews-researchers-institutes-articles.ksql \
    confluentinc/cp-ksqldb-cli:7.8.0 http://ksqldb-server:8088

• On ksqlDB-cli command line, run the following commands

  • Set auto.offset.reset value

    SET 'auto.offset.reset' = 'earliest';

  • Run the following script. It will create researchers_institutes topic

    RUN SCRIPT '/tmp/researchers-institutes.ksql';

  • Check whether the topic was created

    DESCRIBE "researchers_institutes";
    SELECT * FROM "researchers_institutes" EMIT CHANGES LIMIT 5;

  • Run the script below. It will create reviews_researchers_institutes_articles topic

    RUN SCRIPT '/tmp/reviews-researchers-institutes-articles.ksql';

  • Check whether the topic was created

    DESCRIBE "reviews_researchers_institutes_articles";
    SELECT * FROM "reviews_researchers_institutes_articles" EMIT CHANGES LIMIT 1;

Create connectors (4/4)

• In a terminal, make sure you are in the springboot-kafka-connect-debezium-ksqldb root folder

• Run the curl command below to create elasticsearch-sink-researchers connector in kafka-connect

  curl -i -X POST localhost:8083/connectors -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d @connectors/elasticsearch-sink-researchers.json

• You can check the state of the connector and its task on Kafka Connect UI (http://localhost:8086) or calling kafka-connect endpoint

  curl localhost:8083/connectors/elasticsearch-sink-researchers/status

Run kafka-research-consumer

• Open a new terminal and navigate to the springboot-kafka-connect-debezium-ksqldb root folder

• Run the command below to start the application

  ./mvnw clean spring-boot:run --projects kafka-research-consumer -Dspring-boot.run.jvmArguments="-Dserver.port=9081"

  The command below generates the Java class ReviewMessage from Avro file present in src/main/resources/avro

  ./mvnw generate-sources --projects kafka-research-consumer

• This service runs on port 9081. The health endpoint is http://localhost:9081/actuator/health

• [Optional] We can start another kafka-research-consumer instance by opening another terminal and running

  ./mvnw clean spring-boot:run --projects kafka-research-consumer -Dspring-boot.run.jvmArguments="-Dserver.port=9082"

Testing

• Go to the terminal where ksql-cli is running

• On ksql-cli command line, run the following query

  SELECT * FROM "reviews_researchers_institutes_articles" EMIT CHANGES;

• In another terminal, call the research-service simulation endpoint

  curl -X POST localhost:9080/api/simulation/reviews \
    -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
    -d "{\"total\": 100, \"sleep\": 100}"

• The GIF below shows it. research-service is running in the upper left terminal; kafka-research-consumer is running in the upper right terminal; the middle terminal is used to submit the POST request to research-service. The lower terminal is where ksql-cli is running.

  

• You can also query Elasticsearch

  curl "localhost:9200/reviews/_search?pretty"

Useful Links/Commands

• Kafka Topics UI

  Kafka Topics UI can be accessed at http://localhost:8085

• Kafka Connect UI

  Kafka Connect UI can be accessed at http://localhost:8086

• Schema Registry UI

  Schema Registry UI can be accessed at http://localhost:8001

• Schema Registry

  You can use curl to check the subjects in Schema Registry

  • Get the list of subjects

    curl localhost:8081/subjects

  • Get the latest version of the subject mysql.researchdb.researchers-value

    curl localhost:8081/subjects/mysql.researchdb.researchers-value/versions/latest

• Kafka Manager

  Kafka Manager can be accessed at http://localhost:9000

  Configuration

  • First, you must create a new cluster. Click on Cluster (dropdown on the header) and then on Add Cluster
  • Type the name of your cluster in Cluster Name field, for example: MyCluster
  • Type zookeeper:2181 in Cluster Zookeeper Hosts field
  • Enable checkbox Poll consumer information (Not recommended for large # of consumers if ZK is used for offsets tracking on older Kafka versions)
  • Click on Save button at the bottom of the page.

• Elasticsearch

  Elasticsearch can be accessed at http://localhost:9200

  • Get all indices

    curl "localhost:9200/_cat/indices?v"

  • Search for documents

    curl "localhost:9200/articles/_search?pretty"
    curl "localhost:9200/institutes/_search?pretty"
    curl "localhost:9200/researchers/_search?pretty"
    curl "localhost:9200/reviews/_search?pretty"

• MySQL

  • Access MySQL monitor

    docker exec -it -e MYSQL_PWD=secret mysql mysql -uroot --database researchdb

  • Inside the monitor, run the following SELECT command

    SELECT a.id AS review_id, c.id AS article_id, c.title AS article_title, b.id AS reviewer_id, b.first_name, b.last_name, b.institute_id, a.comment \
    FROM reviews a, researchers b, articles c \
    WHERE a.researcher_id = b.id and a.article_id = c.id;

  Type exit to leave MySQL terminal

Shutdown

• Go to the terminals where research-service and kafka-research-consumer are running and press Ctrl+C to stop them
• Go to the terminal where ksql-cli is running and press Ctrl+C to stop the SELECT; then, type exit
• To stop and remove docker compose containers, network and volumes, go to a terminal and, inside the springboot-kafka-connect-debezium-ksqldb root folder, run the command below

  docker compose down -v

Cleanup

To remove the Docker images created by this project, go to a terminal and, inside the springboot-kafka-connect-debezium-ksqldb root folder, run the following script

./remove-docker-images.sh