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Amazon SQS Source Connector for Confluent Cloud

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.

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.

Important

If you are still on Confluent Cloud Enterprise, please contact your Confluent Account Executive for more information about using this connector.

Features

The Amazon SQS Source connector provides the following features:

  • 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 Configuration Properties for configuration property values and descriptions.

See Cloud connector limitations for additional 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. Enter your Kafka Cluster credentials. The credentials are either the cluster API key and secret or the service account API key and secret.
  3. Select a topic. A topic must exist before launching the connector.
  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 an Output message 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).
  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 configuration 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 Cloud CLI

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

Note

Make sure you have all your prerequisites completed.

Step 1: List the available connectors.

Enter the following command to list available connectors:

ccloud connector-catalog list

Step 2: Show the required connector configuration properties.

Enter the following command to show the required connector properties:

ccloud connector-catalog describe <connector-catalog-name>

For example:

ccloud connector-catalog describe SqsSource

Example output:

Following are the required configs:
connector.class: SqsSource
name
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.api.key": "<INSERT KAFKA API KEY>",
    "kafka.api.secret": "<INSERT 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.
  • "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).
  • "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 configuration 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:

ccloud connector create --config <file-name>.json

For example:

ccloud connector 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:

ccloud connector 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

The following connector configuration properties are used with the Amazon SQS Source connector for Confluent Cloud.

aws.access.key.id

The AWS access key that is used to connect to SQS.

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

The AWS secret key that is used to connect to SQS.

  • Type: password
  • Default: null
  • Importance: high
sqs.url

Fully qualified Amazon SQS URL from which this source connector polls messages.

  • Type: string
  • Valid Values: Fully qualified HTTPS URL. For example: https://sqs.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/123456789012/MyQueue.
  • Importance: high
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.

  • Type: string
  • Importance: medium

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 Cloud CLI to manage your resources in Confluent Cloud.

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