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Amazon SQS Source Connector for Confluent Cloud

Note

If you are installing the connector locally for Confluent Platform, see Amazon SQS Source Connector for Confluent Platform.

The Kafka Connect Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) Source connector is used to move messages from an Amazon SQS Queue into Apache Kafka®. It supports both Standard queues and First-In-First-Out (FIFO) queues. The connector polls an Amazon SQS queue, converts SQS messages into Kafka records, and then pushes the records into a Kafka topic.

The connector converts an Amazon SQS message into a Kafka record, with the following structure:

  • The key encodes the SQS queue name and message ID in a struct. For FIFO queues, it also includes the message group ID.
  • The value encodes the body of the SQS message and various message attributes in a struct.
  • Each header encodes message attributes that may be present in the SQS message.

For record schema details, see Record Schemas.

For standard queues, the connector supports best-effort ordering guarantees. This means that there is a chance records will end up in a different order in Kafka.

For FIFO queues, the connector guarantees records are inserted into Kafka in the order they were inserted in Amazon SQS, as long as the destination Kafka topic has exactly one partition. If the destination topic has more than one partition, you can use a Single Message Transforms (SMT) to set the partition based on the MessageGroupId field in the key.

Note that the connector provides least once delivery. This means there is a chance that the connector can introduce duplicate records in Kafka for both standard and FIFO queues.

Features

The Amazon SQS Source connector provides the following features:

  • Topics created automatically: The connector can automatically create Kafka topics.
  • At least once delivery: The connector guarantees that records are delivered at least once to the Kafka topic.
  • Supports multiple tasks: The connector supports running one or more tasks. More tasks may improve performance.
  • Automatic retries: The connector will retry all requests (that can be retried) when the Amazon SQS service is unavailable. This value defaults to three retries.
  • Supported data formats: The connector supports Avro, JSON Schema (JSON-SR), Protobuf, and JSON (schemaless) output formats. Schema Registry must be enabled to use a Schema Registry-based format (for example, Avro, JSON Schema, or Protobuf). See Environment Limitations for additional information.

For more information and examples to use with the Confluent Cloud API for Connect, see the Confluent Cloud API for Connect section.

Limitations

Be sure to review the following information.

Quick Start

Use this quick start to get up and running with the Confluent Cloud Amazon SQS Source connector. The quick start provides the basics of selecting the connector and configuring it to stream events.

Prerequisites

Using the Confluent Cloud Console

Step 1: Launch your Confluent Cloud cluster.

See the Quick Start for Apache Kafka using Confluent Cloud for installation instructions.

Step 2: Add a connector.

In the left navigation menu, click Data integration, and then click Connectors. If you already have connectors in your cluster, click + Add connector.

Step 3: Select your connector.

Click the Amazon SQS Source connector icon.

Amazon SQS Source Connector Icon

Step 4: Set up the connection.

Note

  • Make sure you have all your prerequisites completed.
  • An asterisk ( * ) designates a required entry.
  1. Enter a connector Name.
  2. Select the way you want to provide Kafka Cluster credentials. You can either select a service account resource ID or you can enter an API key and secret (or generate these in the Cloud Console).
  3. Enter the Kafka topic name where you want data sent. The connector can create a topic automatically if no topics exist.
  4. Enter your AWS credentials. For information about how to set these up, see Access Keys.
  5. Enter the Amazon SQS connection details:
    • Fully qualified SQS URL: For example, https://sqs.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/123456789012/MyQueue. For details, see Amazon SQS queue and message identifiers.
    • SQS Region: The AWS region that the SQS queue belongs to. If left empty, the connector attempts to infer the region from the SQS URL.
  6. Select the Output Kafka record value format (data going to the Kafka topic): AVRO, JSON_SR (JSON Schema), PROTOBUF, or JSON (schemaless). Schema Registry must be enabled to use a Schema Registry-based format (for example, Avro, JSON_SR (JSON Schema), or Protobuf). See Environment Limitations for additional information.
  7. Enter the number of tasks to use with the connector. More tasks may improve performance.
  8. Transforms and Predicates: See the Single Message Transforms (SMT) documentation for details.

See Configuration Properties for all property values and descriptions.

Step 5: Launch the connector.

Verify the connection details and click Launch.

Step 6: Check the connector status.

The status for the connector should go from Provisioning to Running.

Step 7: Check for records.

Verify that records are being produced at the Kafka topic.

For more information and examples to use with the Confluent Cloud API for Connect, see the Confluent Cloud API for Connect section.

Using the Confluent CLI

Complete the following steps to set up and run the connector using the Confluent CLI.

Note

  • Make sure you have all your prerequisites completed.
  • The example commands use Confluent CLI version 2. For more information see, Confluent CLI v2.

Step 1: List the available connectors.

Enter the following command to list available connectors:

confluent connect plugin list

Step 2: Show the required connector configuration properties.

Enter the following command to show the required connector properties:

confluent connect plugin describe <connector-catalog-name>

For example:

confluent connect plugin describe SqsSource

Example output:

Following are the required configs:
connector.class: SqsSource
name
kafka.auth.mode
kafka.api.key
kafka.api.secret
sqs.url
kafka.topic
aws.access.key.id
aws.secret.key.id
output.data.format
tasks.max

Step 3: Create the connector configuration file.

Create a JSON file that contains the connector configuration properties. The following entry shows the required configuration properties.

{
  "name": "SqsSource_0",
  "config": {
    "connector.class": "SqsSource",
    "name": "SqsSource_0",
    "kafka.auth.mode": "KAFKA_API_KEY",
    "kafka.api.key": "<my-kafka-api-key>",
    "kafka.api.secret": "<my-kafka-api-secret>",
    "sqs.url": "https://sqs.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/123456789012/MyQueue",
    "kafka.topic": "stocks",
    "aws.access.key.id": "<INSERT AWS API KEY>",
    "aws.secret.access.key": "<INSERT AWS API SECRET>",
    "output.data.format": "JSON",
    "tasks.max": "1"
  }
}

Note the following property definitions:

  • "connector.class": Identifies the connector plugin name.
  • "name": Sets a name for your new connector.

  • "kafka.auth.mode": Identifies the connector authentication mode you want to use. There are two options: SERVICE_ACCOUNT or KAFKA_API_KEY (the default). To use an API key and secret, specify the configuration properties kafka.api.key and kafka.api.secret, as shown in the example configuration (above). To use a service account, specify the Resource ID in the property kafka.service.account.id=<service-account-resource-ID>. To list the available service account resource IDs, use the following command:

    confluent iam service-account list

    For example:

    confluent iam service-account list

   Id     | Resource ID |       Name        |    Description
+---------+-------------+-------------------+-------------------
   123456 | sa-l1r23m   | sa-1              | Service account 1
   789101 | sa-l4d56p   | sa-2              | Service account 2

  • "sqs.url": For example, https://sqs.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/123456789012/MyQueue. For details, see Amazon SQS queue and message identifiers.

  • "sqs.region": The AWS region that the SQS queue belongs to. If this property is not used, the connector attempts to infer the region from the SQS URL.

  • "aws.access.key.id" and "aws.secret.access.key": Enter the AWS Access Key ID and Secret. For information about how to set these up, see Access Keys.

  • "output.data.format": Enter an output data format (data going to the Kafka topic): AVRO, JSON_SR (JSON Schema), PROTOBUF, or JSON (schemaless). Schema Registry must be enabled to use a Schema Registry-based format (for example, Avro, JSON_SR (JSON Schema), or Protobuf). See Environment Limitations for additional information.

  • "tasks.max": Enter the number of tasks to use with the connector. More tasks may improve performance.

Single Message Transforms: See the Single Message Transforms (SMT) documentation for details about adding SMTs using the CLI.

See Configuration Properties for all property values and descriptions.

Step 4: Load the properties file and create the connector.

Enter the following command to load the configuration and start the connector:

confluent connect create --config <file-name>.json

For example:

confluent connect create --config sqs-source-config.json

Example output:

Created connector SqsSource_0 lcc-do6vzd

Step 5: Check the connector status.

Enter the following command to check the connector status:

confluent connect list

Example output:

ID           |       Name       | Status  | Type   | Trace
+------------+------------------+---------+--------+-------+
lcc-do6vzd   | SqsSource_0      | RUNNING | source |       |

Step 6: Check for records.

Verify that records are being produced at the Kafka topic.

For more information and examples to use with the Confluent Cloud API for Connect, see the Confluent Cloud API for Connect section.

Configuration Properties

Use the following configuration properties with this connector.

How should we connect to your data?

name

Sets a name for your connector.

  • Type: string
  • Valid Values: A string at most 64 characters long
  • Importance: high

Kafka Cluster credentials

kafka.auth.mode

Kafka Authentication mode. It can be one of KAFKA_API_KEY or SERVICE_ACCOUNT. It defaults to KAFKA_API_KEY mode.

  • Type: string
  • Default: KAFKA_API_KEY
  • Valid Values: KAFKA_API_KEY, SERVICE_ACCOUNT
  • Importance: high
kafka.api.key
  • Type: password
  • Importance: high
kafka.service.account.id

The Service Account that will be used to generate the API keys to communicate with Kafka Cluster.

  • Type: string
  • Importance: high
kafka.api.secret
  • Type: password
  • Importance: high

Which topic do you want to send data to?

kafka.topic

Identifies the topic name to write the data to.

  • Type: string
  • Importance: high

AWS Credentials

aws.access.key.id

The Amazon Access Key used to connect to SQS.

  • Type: password
  • Importance: high
aws.secret.key.id

The Amazon Secret Key used to connect to SQS.

  • Type: password
  • Importance: high

How should we connect to Amazon SQS?

sqs.url

Fully qualified Amazon SQS URL to read messages from

  • Type: string
  • Importance: high
sqs.region

The AWS region that the SQS queue belongs to. If left empty, the connector will attempt to infer the region from the SQS URL.

  • Type: string
  • Importance: medium

Output messages

output.data.format

Sets the output Kafka record value format. Valid entries are AVRO, JSON_SR, PROTOBUF, or JSON. Note that you need to have Confluent Cloud Schema Registry configured if using a schema-based message format like AVRO, JSON_SR, and PROTOBUF

  • Type: string
  • Importance: high

Number of tasks for this connector

tasks.max
  • Type: int
  • Valid Values: [1,…]
  • Importance: high

Record Schemas

The Amazon SQS Source connector creates records using following schemas.

Key Schema

The Key is a struct with the following fields:

Field Name Schema Type Optional? Description
QueueUrl string mandatory The fully qualified SQS queue URL from which the record is generated.
MessageId string mandatory The unique message ID of the message within Amazon SQS.
MessageGroupId string optional For FIFO queues, this is the message group ID.

Value Schema

The Value is a struct with the following fields:

Field Name Schema Type Optional? Description
Body string   The body of the SQS message.
ApproximateFirstReceiveTimestamp int64   Returns the time the message was first received from the queue (epoch time in milliseconds).
ApproximateReceiveCount int32   Returns the number of times a message has been received across all queues but not deleted.
SenderId string   The IAM user or role that sent this message to SQS.
SentTimestamp int64   Returns the time the message was sent to the queue (epoch time in milliseconds
MessageDeduplicationId string Optional Returns the value provided by the producer that calls the SendMessage action.
MessageGroupId string Optional Returns the value provided by the producer that calls the SendMessage action. Messages with the same MessageGroupId are returned in sequence.
SequenceNumber string   Returns the value provided by Amazon SQS.

For more information, see Request Parameters.

Header Schema

Each message attribute in SQS is converted to a Header in Kafka.

  • The header key is the name of the message attribute.
  • The header value is the value of the message attribute.
  • The header schema depends on the data type of the message attribute.
    • String message attributes use a string schema.
    • Number message attributes use a string schema.
    • Binary message attributes use a bytes schema.
    • Custom message attributes use either string or bytes, depending on the type of custom attribute.

For more information, see Message attribute components.

Next Steps

See also

For an example that shows fully-managed Confluent Cloud connectors in action with Confluent Cloud ksqlDB, see the Cloud ETL Demo. This example also shows how to use Confluent CLI to manage your resources in Confluent Cloud.

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