Requirements Parameters Timestream record content Examples

Timestream

The Timestream rule action writes attributes (measures) from an MQTT message into an Amazon Timestream table. For more information about Amazon Timestream, see What Is Amazon Timestream?.

Note

Amazon Timestream is not available in all AWS Regions. If Amazon Timestream is not available in your Region, it won't appear in the list of rule actions.

The attributes that this rule stores in the Timestream database are those that result from the rule's query statement. The value of each attribute in the query statement's result is parsed to infer its data type (as in a DynamoDBv2 action). Each attribute's value is written to its own record in the Timestream table. To specify or change an attribute's data type, use the cast() function in the query statement. For more information about the contents of each Timestream record, see Timestream record content.

Note

With SQL V2 (2016-03-23), numeric values that are whole numbers, such as 10.0, are converted their Integer representation (10). Explicitly casting them to a Decimal value, such as by using the cast() function, does not prevent this behavior—the result is still an Integer value. This can cause type mismatch errors that prevent data from being recorded in the Timestream database. To process whole number numeric values as Decimal values, use SQL V1 (2015-10-08) for the rule query statement.

Note

The maximum number of values that a Timestream rule action can write into an Amazon Timestream table is 100. For more information, see Amazon Timestream Quota's Reference.

Requirements

This rule action has the following requirements:

An IAM role that AWS IoT can assume to perform the timestream:DescribeEndpoints and timestream:WriteRecords operations. For more information, see Granting an AWS IoT rule the access it requires.

In the AWS IoT console, you can choose, update, or create a role to allow AWS IoT to perform this rule action.
If you use a customer- AWS KMS to encrypt data at rest in Timestream, the service must have permission to use the AWS KMS key on the caller's behalf. For more information, see How AWS services use AWS KMS.

Parameters

When you create an AWS IoT rule with this action, you must specify the following information:

databaseName

The name of an Amazon Timestream database that has the table to receive the records this action creates. See also tableName.

Supports substitution templates: API and AWS CLI only

dimensions

Metadata attributes of the time series that are written in each measure record. For example, the name and Availability Zone of an EC2 instance or the name of the manufacturer of a wind turbine are dimensions.

name

The metadata dimension name. This is the name of the column in the database table record.

Dimensions can't be named: measure_name, measure_value, or time. These names are reserved. Dimension names can't start with ts_ or measure_value and they can't contain the colon (:) character.

Supports substitution templates: No

value

The value to write in this column of the database record.

Supports substitution templates: Yes

roleArn

The Amazon Resource Name (ARN) of the role that grants AWS IoT permission to write to the Timestream database table. For more information, see Requirements.

Supports substitution templates: No

tableName

The name of the database table into which to write the measure records. See also databaseName.

Supports substitution templates: API and AWS CLI only

timestamp

The value to use for the entry's timestamp. If blank, the time that the entry was processed is used.

unit

The precision of the timestamp value that results from the expression described in value.

Valid values: SECONDS | MILLISECONDS | MICROSECONDS | NANOSECONDS. The default is MILLISECONDS.

value

An expression that returns a long epoch time value.

You can use the time_to_epoch(String, String) function to create a valid timestamp from a date or time value passed in the message payload.

Timestream record content

The data written to the Amazon Timestream table by this action include a timestamp, metadata from the Timestream rule action, and the result of the rule's query statement.

For each attribute (measure) in the result of the query statement, this rule action writes a record to the specified Timestream table with these columns.

Column name	Attribute type	Value	Comments
`dimension-name`	DIMENSION	The value specified in the Timestream rule action entry.	Each Dimension specified in the rule action entry creates a column in the Timestream database with the dimension's name.
measure_name	MEASURE_NAME	The attribute's name	The name of the attribute in the result of the query statement whose value is specified in the `measure_value::data-type` column.
measure_value::`data-type`	MEASURE_VALUE	The value of the attribute in the result of the query statement. The attribute's name is in the `measure_name` column.	The value is interpreted* and cast as the most suitable match of: `bigint`, `boolean`, `double`, or `varchar`. Amazon Timestream creates a separate column for each data type. The value in the message can be cast to another data type by using the cast() function in the rule's query statement.
time	TIMESTAMP	The date and time of the record in the database.	This value is assigned by rules engine or the `timestamp` property, if it is defined.

* The attribute value read from the message payload is interpreted as follows. See the Examples for an illustration of each of these cases.

An unquoted value of true or false is interpreted as a boolean type.
A decimal numeric is interpreted as a double type.
A numeric value without a decimal point is interpreted as a bigint type.
A quoted string is interpreted as a varchar type.
Objects and array values are converted to JSON strings and stored as a varchar type.

Examples

The following JSON example defines a Timestream rule action with a substitution template in an AWS IoT rule.


{
  "topicRulePayload": {
    "sql": "SELECT * FROM 'iot/topic'",
    "ruleDisabled": false,
    "awsIotSqlVersion": "2016-03-23",
    "actions": [
      {
        "timestream": {
          "roleArn": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/aws_iot_timestream",
          "tableName": "devices_metrics",
          "dimensions": [
            {
              "name": "device_id",
              "value": "${clientId()}"
            },
            {
              "name": "device_firmware_sku",
              "value": "My Static Metadata"
            }
          ],
          "databaseName": "record_devices"
        }
      }
    ]
  }
}

Using the Timestream topic rule action defined in the previous example with the following message payload results in the Amazon Timestream records written in the table that follows.


{
  "boolean_value": true,
  "integer_value": 123456789012,
  "double_value": 123.456789012,
  "string_value": "String value",
  "boolean_value_as_string": "true",
  "integer_value_as_string": "123456789012",
  "double_value_as_string": "123.456789012",
  "array_of_integers": [23,36,56,72],
  "array of strings": ["red", "green","blue"],
  "complex_value": {
    "simple_element": 42,
    "array_of_integers": [23,36,56,72],
    "array of strings": ["red", "green","blue"]
  }
}

The following table displays the database columns and records that using the specified topic rule action to process the previous message payload creates. The device_firmware_sku and device_id columns are the DIMENSIONS defined in the topic rule action. The Timestream topic rule action creates the time column and the measure_name and measure_value::* columns, which it fills with the values from the result of the topic rule action's query statement.

device_firmware_sku	device_id	measure_name	measure_value::bigint	measure_value::varchar	measure_value::double	measure_value::boolean	time
My Static Metadata	iotconsole-159EXAMPLE738-0	complex_value	-	{"simple_element":42,"array_of_integers":[23,36,56,72],"array of strings":["red","green","blue"]}	-	-	2020-08-26 22:42:16.423000000
My Static Metadata	iotconsole-159EXAMPLE738-0	integer_value_as_string	-	123456789012	-	-	2020-08-26 22:42:16.423000000
My Static Metadata	iotconsole-159EXAMPLE738-0	boolean_value	-	-	-	TRUE	2020-08-26 22:42:16.423000000
My Static Metadata	iotconsole-159EXAMPLE738-0	integer_value	123456789012	-	-	-	2020-08-26 22:42:16.423000000
My Static Metadata	iotconsole-159EXAMPLE738-0	string_value	-	String value	-	-	2020-08-26 22:42:16.423000000
My Static Metadata	iotconsole-159EXAMPLE738-0	array_of_integers	-	[23,36,56,72]	-	-	2020-08-26 22:42:16.423000000
My Static Metadata	iotconsole-159EXAMPLE738-0	array of strings	-	["red","green","blue"]	-	-	2020-08-26 22:42:16.423000000
My Static Metadata	iotconsole-159EXAMPLE738-0	boolean_value_as_string	-	TRUE	-	-	2020-08-26 22:42:16.423000000
My Static Metadata	iotconsole-159EXAMPLE738-0	double_value	-	-	123.456789012	-	2020-08-26 22:42:16.423000000
My Static Metadata	iotconsole-159EXAMPLE738-0	double_value_as_string	-	123.45679	-	-	2020-08-26 22:42:16.423000000

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