Developing a Kinesis Client Library Consumer in .NET - Amazon Kinesis Data Streams

Developing a Kinesis Client Library Consumer in .NET

You can use the Kinesis Client Library (KCL) to build applications that process data from your Kinesis data streams. The Kinesis Client Library is available in multiple languages. This topic discusses .NET.

The KCL is a Java library; support for languages other than Java is provided using a multi-language interface called the MultiLangDaemon. This daemon is Java-based and runs in the background when you are using a KCL language other than Java. Therefore, if you install the KCL for .NET and write your consumer app entirely in .NET, you still need Java installed on your system because of the MultiLangDaemon. Further, MultiLangDaemon has some default settings you may need to customize for your use case, for example, the AWS Region that it connects to. For more information about the MultiLangDaemon on GitHub, go to the KCL MultiLangDaemon project page.

To download the .NET KCL from GitHub, go to Kinesis Client Library (.NET). To download sample code for a .NET KCL consumer application, go to the KCL for .NET sample consumer project page on GitHub.

You must complete the following tasks when implementing a KCL consumer application in .NET:

Implement the IRecordProcessor Class Methods

The consumer must implement the following methods for IRecordProcessor. The sample consumer provides implementations that you can use as a starting point (see the SampleRecordProcessor class in SampleConsumer/AmazonKinesisSampleConsumer.cs).

public void Initialize(InitializationInput input) public void ProcessRecords(ProcessRecordsInput input) public void Shutdown(ShutdownInput input)
Initialize

The KCL calls this method when the record processor is instantiated, passing a specific shard ID in the input parameter (input.ShardId). This record processor processes only this shard, and typically, the reverse is also true (this shard is processed only by this record processor). However, your consumer should account for the possibility that a data record might be processed more than one time. This is because Kinesis Data Streams has at least once semantics, meaning that every data record from a shard is processed at least one time by a worker in your consumer. For more information about cases in which a particular shard might be processed by more than one worker, see Resharding, Scaling, and Parallel Processing.

public void Initialize(InitializationInput input)
ProcessRecords

The KCL calls this method, passing a list of data records in the input parameter (input.Records) from the shard specified by the Initialize method. The record processor that you implement processes the data in these records according to the semantics of your consumer. For example, the worker might perform a transformation on the data and then store the result in an Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) bucket.

public void ProcessRecords(ProcessRecordsInput input)

In addition to the data itself, the record also contains a sequence number and partition key. The worker can use these values when processing the data. For example, the worker could choose the S3 bucket in which to store the data based on the value of the partition key. The Record class exposes the following to access the record's data, sequence number, and partition key:

byte[] Record.Data string Record.SequenceNumber string Record.PartitionKey

In the sample, the method ProcessRecordsWithRetries has code that shows how a worker can access the record's data, sequence number, and partition key.

Kinesis Data Streams requires the record processor to keep track of the records that have already been processed in a shard. The KCL takes care of this tracking for you by passing a Checkpointer object to ProcessRecords (input.Checkpointer). The record processor calls the Checkpointer.Checkpoint method to inform the KCL of how far it has progressed in processing the records in the shard. If the worker fails, the KCL uses this information to restart the processing of the shard at the last known processed record.

For a split or merge operation, the KCL doesn't start processing the new shards until the processors for the original shards have called Checkpointer.Checkpoint to signal that all processing on the original shards is complete.

If you don't pass a parameter, the KCL assumes that the call to Checkpointer.Checkpoint signifies that all records have been processed, up to the last record that was passed to the record processor. Therefore, the record processor should call Checkpointer.Checkpoint only after it has processed all the records in the list that was passed to it. Record processors do not need to call Checkpointer.Checkpoint on each call to ProcessRecords. A processor could, for example, call Checkpointer.Checkpoint on every third or fourth call. You can optionally specify the exact sequence number of a record as a parameter to Checkpointer.Checkpoint. In this case, the KCL assumes that records have been processed only up to that record.

In the sample, the private method Checkpoint(Checkpointer checkpointer) shows how to call the Checkpointer.Checkpoint method using appropriate exception handling and retry logic.

The KCL for .NET handles exceptions differently from other KCL language libraries in that it does not handle any exceptions that arise from processing the data records. Any uncaught exceptions from user code crashes the program.

Shutdown

The KCL calls the Shutdown method either when processing ends (the shutdown reason is TERMINATE) or the worker is no longer responding (the shutdown input.Reason value is ZOMBIE).

public void Shutdown(ShutdownInput input)

Processing ends when the record processor does not receive any further records from the shard, because the shard was split or merged, or the stream was deleted.

The KCL also passes a Checkpointer object to shutdown. If the shutdown reason is TERMINATE, the record processor should finish processing any data records, and then call the checkpoint method on this interface.

Modify the Configuration Properties

The sample consumer provides default values for the configuration properties. You can override any of these properties with your own values (see SampleConsumer/kcl.properties).

Application Name

The KCL requires an application that this is unique among your applications, and among Amazon DynamoDB tables in the same Region. It uses the application name configuration value in the following ways:

  • All workers associated with this application name are assumed to be working together on the same stream. These workers may be distributed on multiple instances. If you run an additional instance of the same application code, but with a different application name, the KCL treats the second instance as an entirely separate application that is also operating on the same stream.

  • The KCL creates a DynamoDB table with the application name and uses the table to maintain state information (such as checkpoints and worker-shard mapping) for the application. Each application has its own DynamoDB table. For more information, see Using a Lease Table to Track the Shards Processed by the KCL Consumer Application.

Set Up Credentials

You must make your AWS credentials available to one of the credential providers in the default credential providers chain. You can you use the AWSCredentialsProvider property to set a credentials provider. The sample.properties must make your credentials available to one of the credentials providers in the default credential providers chain. If you are running your consumer application on an EC2 instance, we recommend that you configure the instance with an IAM role. AWS credentials that reflect the permissions associated with this IAM role are made available to applications on the instance through its instance metadata. This is the most secure way to manage credentials for a consumer running on an EC2 instance.

The sample's properties file configures KCL to process a Kinesis data stream called "words" using the record processor supplied in AmazonKinesisSampleConsumer.cs.