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Salesforce Platform Events Source Connector for Confluent Platform¶

Salesforce Platform Events are user-defined publish/subscribe events. The Kafka Connect Salesforce Platform Events Source connector can be used to capture events and write them to Apache Kafka®. This connector can be used with either standalone or distributed Connect workers.

Note

The connector’s salesforce.platform.event.name property indicates the name of the event, must end with __e. For example, salesforce.platform.event.name=UserLogout__e. These platform events must exist in Salesforce before running the connector. See the Salesforce Developer Guide for more information.

Configuration Properties¶

For a complete list of configuration properties for this connector, see Salesforce Platform Events Source Connector Configuration Properties.

Considerations¶

Note the following when using the Salesforce Platform Events source connector.

Replaying Messages¶

High-volume platform event messages are stored for 72 hours (3 days), and standard-volume platform event messages are stored for 24 hours (1 day). When you create a connector, you can control how stored events are treated when the connector starts for the first time.

Consume only new events that arrive in the PushTopic after the connector starts up, via salesforce.initial.start=latest. This is the default behavior, due largely to API limits.
Consume all of the events in the PushTopic, via salesforce.initial.start=all.

Restarting¶

When the connector operates, it periodically records the replay ID of the last record written to Kafka. When the connector is stopped and then restarted within 24 hours (for standard volume messages) or 72 hours (for high volume messages) the connector continues consuming the platform events where it stopped, with no missed events. However, if the connector is stopped for more than 24 or 72 hours, some events are discarded in Salesforce before the connector can read them.

If the connector stops unexpectedly due to a failure, it may not record the replay ID of the last record successfully written to Kafka. When the connector restarts, it resumes from the last recorded replay ID. This means that some events may be duplicated in Kafka.

Retries¶

In case of failures caused by network issues, you can configure the connector to retry Salesforce requests (once authentication succeeds) using request.max.retries.time.ms parameters.

The backoff period for each retry attempt uses a randomization function that grows exponentially. But, if the total time spent retrying the request exceeds this duration (15 minutes by default), retries stop and the request fails. This will likely result in task failure.

Retries Example¶

Create a sfpe-source.properties file with the following contents:

name=RetriesExample
topics=sfpe-messages
tasks.max=1
connector.class=io.confluent.salesforce.SalesforcePlatformEventSourceConnector
key.converter=org.apache.kafka.connect.json.JsonConverter
value.converter=org.apache.kafka.connect.json.JsonConverter
confluent.topic.bootstrap.servers=localhost:9092
confluent.topic.replication.factor=1
salesforce.platform.event.name=ConfluentEvent__e
request.max.retries.time.ms=20000

Run and validate the connector.
The Connector retries requests for an initial backoff duration of 20000 ms. Retries stop if a Salesforce request is successful.

Note that the default value for request.max.retries.time.ms is 900000 ms (15 minutes).

Limitations¶

The following limitations apply to this Salesforce connector:

The connector is limited to one task only.
The connector is limited by the allocations and limits of the Salesforce account. For example, free org accounts have a cap on the number of events that can occur within a 24-hour period.

Examples¶

Note

salesforce.consumer.key and salesforce.consumer.secret are required properties used for OAuth2 secure authentication by Saleforce.com. Additional information and tutorials are available at Salesforce.com.

Property based example¶

This configuration is used typically along with standalone workers.

 name=SFDCPlatformEvents1
 connector.class=io.confluent.salesforce.SalesforcePlatformEventSourceConnector
 tasks.max=1
 kafka.topic=< Required Configuration >
 salesforce.consumer.key=< Required Configuration >
 salesforce.consumer.secret=< Required Configuration >
 salesforce.password=< Required Configuration >
 salesforce.password.token=< Required Configuration >
 salesforce.platform.event.name=< Required Configuration >
 salesforce.username=< Required Configuration >
 salesforce.initial.start=all
 confluent.topic.bootstrap.servers=localhost:9092
 confluent.topic.replication.factor=1
 confluent.license=

Note

Change the confluent.topic.bootstrap.servers property to include your broker address(es), and change the confluent.topic.replication.factor to 3 for staging or production use.

REST-based example¶

This configuration is used typically along with distributed workers. Write the following JSON to connector.json, configure all of the required values, and use the command below to post the configuration to one of the distributed connect worker(s). See Kafka Connect REST API for more information.

Connect Distributed REST example with Platform Event:

{
  "name" : "SFDCPlatformEvents1",
  "config" : {
    "connector.class", "io.confluent.salesforce.SalesforcePlatformEventSourceConnector",
    "tasks.max" : "1",
    "kafka.topic" : "< Required Configuration >",
    "salesforce.consumer.key" : "< Required Configuration >",
    "salesforce.consumer.secret" : "< Required Configuration >",
    "salesforce.password" : "< Required Configuration >",
    "salesforce.password.token" : "< Required Configuration >",
    "salesforce.platform.event.name" : "< Required Configuration >",
    "salesforce.username" : "< Required Configuration >",
    "salesforce.initial.start" : "all",
    "confluent.topic.bootstrap.servers": "localhost:9092",
    "confluent.topic.replication.factor": "1",
    "confluent.license": " Omit to enable trial mode "
  }
}

Note

Change the confluent.topic.bootstrap.servers property to include your broker address(es), and change the confluent.topic.replication.factor to 3 for staging or production use.

Use curl to post a configuration to one of the Kafka Connect Workers. Change http://localhost:8083/ to the endpoint of one of your Kafka Connect worker(s).

Create a new connector:

curl -s -X POST -H 'Content-Type: application/json' --data @connector.json http://localhost:8083/connectors

Update an existing connector:

curl -s -X PUT -H 'Content-Type: application/json' --data @connector.json http://localhost:8083/connectors/SFDCPlatformEvents1/config

Sample data formats¶

The following examples show the JSON document structure of a Salesforce Plaform Event as it received by the Saleforce Connector, converted to a Kafka record, and then stored in a topic. The Plaform Event has three custom fields: NumberField , TextField, and BooleanField. The __c suffix in those fields is appended by Salesforce when the Plaform Event is defined. Platform Events do not generate topic keys in Kafka.

Raw Platform Event received from Salesforce:

{
  "data": {
    "schema": "VrdbV-4eqHB3hllFiCjIrw",
    "payload": {
      "NumberField__c": 33,
      "CreatedById": "0051U000004EE5wQAG",
      "CreatedDate": "2019-03-25T19:43:11.336Z",
      "TextField__c": "This is a Text field",
      "BooleanField__c": true
    },
    "event": {
      "replayId": 44479
    }
  },
  "channel": "/event/ConfluentEvent__e"
}

Kafka record value for the Salesforce Platform Event:

{
  "ReplayId": {
    "string": "44479"
  },
  "CreatedDate": {
    "long": 1553542991336
  },
  "CreatedById": {
    "string": "0051U000004EE5wQAG"
  },
  "TextField__c": {
    "string": "This is a Text field"
  },
  "NumberField__c": {
    "double": 33
  },
  "BooleanField__c": {
    "boolean": true
  },
  "_ObjectType": {
    "string": "ConfluentEvent__e"
  },
  "_EventType": {
    "string": "VrdbV-4eqHB3hllFiCjIrw"
  }
}

Troubleshooting Connector and Task Failures¶

You can use the Kafka Connect REST API to check the status of the connectors and tasks. If a task or connector has failed, the trace field will include a reason and a stack trace.

Authorization Failures

The Salesforce connector must authenticate with Salesforce and establish a connection. If a connection fails because of authentication or authorization errors, the connector will stop immediately. These errors require changes in your Salesforce account which may include creating OAuth tokens. Try to rerun your connector after you make the account changes.

Salesforce Error Codes

Whenever the connector or task fails, it captures a message that includes the Salesforce error code and error message. The message may also include a failure reason or suggested fix. See the Salesforce error codes for more detail about each error code.

Repeated Connection Failures

The Salesforce connector uses a long-lived connection to the Salesforce service. Periodically this connection is lost due to network lag, service disruptions, or network issues. When the connector loses its connection, it automatically attempts to reconnect so that the connector can continue working. In some cases, however, the error reported by Salesforce indicates that the connector is unable to continue. In these cases, the connector task fails and includes the Salesforce error and reason in the task failure message.

If the connector stops frequently because of connection timeouts, consider changing the following connector configuration properties and restarting the connector:

The connection.timeout defaults to 30 seconds (30000 milliseconds) and dictates the maximum amount of time that the connector should wait for a single connection attempt to succeed. If the initial connection takes longer than this, the connector task will fail.
The request.max.retries.time.ms defaults to 15 minutes (900000 milliseconds) and specifies the maximum amount of time that the connector should continue to retry a failed request. The actual duration of the delay is random and it grows exponentially with each retry. If all retries take longer than this value, the connector task will fail. This does not apply to initial connection attempts, but it does apply to subsequent requests to reconnect. Any requests that result in authorization or authentication failures will not be retried.

If the failure rate is not affected by tuning these properties, it may be necessary to look at the Connect worker logs for errors, warnings, and exceptions. The log messages typically have a more detail than the connector status. The log messages preceding failure log messages can provide additional context and may provide you with information that identifies the failure cause.

Enabling Debug Logging¶

The Connect worker log configuration controls how much detail is included in the logs. By default, the worker logs include enough detail to identify basic functionality. Enable DEBUG logs in the Connect worker’s log configuration to include more details. This change must be made on each worker and only takes effect upon worker startup. After you change the log configuration as outlined below on each Connect worker, restart all of the Connect workers. A rolling restart can be used if necessary.

Note

Trace level logging is verbose and contains many more details, and may be useful to solve certain failures. Trace level logging is enabled like debug level logging is enabled, except TRACE is used instead of DEBUG.

On-Premises Installation

For local or on-premises installations of Confluent Platform, the etc/kafka/connect-log4j.properties file defines the logging configuration of the Connect worker process. To enable DEBUG on just the Salesforce connector, modify the etc/kafka/connect-log4j.properties file to include the following line:

log4j.logger.io.confluent.salesforce=DEBUG

To enable DEBUG on all of the Connect worker’s code, including all connectors, change the log4j.rootLogger= line to use DEBUG instead of INFO. For example, the default log configuration for Connect includes this line:

log4j.rootLogger=INFO, stdout

Change this line to the following to enable DEBUG on all of the Connect worker code:

log4j.rootLogger=DEBUG, stdout

Docker

For Docker containers, the logging configuration is set via environment variables. To enable DEBUG on just the Salesforce connector, use the following environment variable when starting your Confluent Platform Connect container:

CONNECT_LOG4J_ROOT_LOGLEVEL=DEBUG

To enable DEBUG log messages on all Connect worker code, including all connectors, use the following environment variable when starting your Confluent Platform Connect container:

CONNECT_LOG4J_LOGGERS="log4j.logger.io.confluent.salesforce=DEBUG"

The value of this environment variable is a comma-separated list of key-value pairs. For example, the following enables DEBUG on the Salesforce connector and the Connect framework:

CONNECT_LOG4J_LOGGERS="log4j.logger.io.confluent.salesforce=DEBUG,org.apache.kafka.connect=DEBUG"

Additional Documentation¶

Salesforce Platform Events Source Connector Configuration Properties