ratchet

Overview ¶

Package ratchet is a library for performing data pipeline / ETL tasks in Go.

The main construct in Ratchet is Pipeline. A Pipeline has a series of PipelineStages, which will each perform some type of data processing, and then send new data on to the next stage. Each PipelineStage consists of one or more DataProcessors, which are responsible for receiving, processing, and then sending data on to the next stage of processing. DataProcessors each run in their own goroutine, and therefore all data processing can be executing concurrently.

Here is a conceptual drawing of a fairly simple Pipeline:

+--Pipeline------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|                                                                       PipelineStage 3              |
|                                                                      +---------------------------+ |
|  PipelineStage 1                 PipelineStage 2          +-JSON---> |  CSVWriter                | |
| +------------------+           +-----------------------+  |          +---------------------------+ |
| |  SQLReader       +-JSON----> | Custom DataProcessor  +--+                                        |
| +------------------+           +-----------------------+  |          +---------------------------+ |
|                                                           +-JSON---> |  SQLWriter                | |
|                                                                      +---------------------------+ |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

In this example, we have a Pipeline consisting of 3 PipelineStages. The first stage has a DataProcessor that runs queries on a SQL database, the second is doing custom transformation work on that data, and the third stage branches into 2 DataProcessors, one writing the resulting data to a CSV file, and the other inserting into another SQL database.

In the example above, Stage 1 and Stage 3 are using built-in DataProcessors (see the "processors" package/subdirectory). However, Stage 2 is using a custom implementation of DataProcessor. By using a combination of built-in processors, and supporting the writing of any Go code to process data, Ratchet makes it possible to write very custom and fast data pipeline systems. See the DataProcessor documentation to learn more.

Since each DataProcessor is running in it's own goroutine, SQLReader can continue pulling and sending data while each subsequent stage is also processing data. Optimally-designed pipelines have processors that can each run in an isolated fashion, processing data without having to worry about what's coming next down the pipeline.

All data payloads sent between DataProcessors are of type data.JSON ([]byte). This provides a good balance of consistency and flexibility. See the "data" package for details and helper functions for dealing with data.JSON. Another good read for handling JSON data in Go is http://blog.golang.org/json-and-go.

Note that many of the concepts in Ratchet were taken from the Golang blog's post on pipelines (http://blog.golang.org/pipelines). While the details discussed in that blog post are largely abstracted away by Ratchet, it is still an interesting read and will help explain the general concepts being applied.

Creating and Running a Basic Pipeline ¶

There are two ways to construct and run a Pipeline. The first is a basic, non-branching Pipeline. For example:

+------------+   +-------------------+   +---------------+
| SQLReader  +---> CustomTransformer +---> SQLWriter     |
+------------+   +-------------------+   +---------------+

This is a 3-stage Pipeline that queries some SQL data in stage 1, does some custom data transformation in stage 2, and then writes the resulting data to a SQL table in stage 3. The code to create and run this basic Pipeline would look something like:

// First initalize the DataProcessors
read := processors.NewSQLReader(db1, "SELECT * FROM source_table")
transform := NewCustomTransformer() // (This would your own custom DataProcessor implementation)
write := processors.NewSQLWriter(db2, "destination_table")

// Then create a new Pipeline using them
pipeline := ratchet.NewPipeline(read, transform, write)

// Finally, run the Pipeline and wait for either an error or nil to be returned
err := <-pipeline.Run()

Creating and Running a Branching Pipeline ¶

The second way to construct a Pipeline is using a PipelineLayout. This method allows for more complex Pipeline configurations that support branching between stages that are running multiple DataProcessors. Here is a (fairly complex) example:

                                                               +----------------------+
                                                        +------> SQLReader (Dynamic)  +--+
                                                        |      +----------------------+  |
                                                        |                                |
                     +---------------------------+      |      +----------------------+  |    +-----------+
               +-----> SQLReader (Dynamic Query) +------+   +--> Custom DataProcessor +-------> CSVWriter |
+-----------+  |     +---------------------------+      |   |  +----------------------+  |    +-----------+
| SQLReader +--+                                     +------+                            |
+-----------+  |     +---------------------------+   |  |      +----------------------+  |    +-----------+
               +-----> Custom DataProcessor      +------+------> Custom DataProcessor +--+  +-> SQLWriter |
                     +---------------------------+   |         +----------------------+     | +-----------+
                                                     |                                      |
                                                     |         +----------------------+     |
                                                     +---------> Passthrough          +-----+
                                                               +----------------------+

This Pipeline consists of 4 stages where each DataProcessor is choosing which DataProcessors in the subsequent stage should receive the data it sends. The SQLReader in stage 2, for example, is sending data to only 2 processors in the next stage, while the Custom DataProcessor in stage 2 is sending it's data to 3. The code for constructing and running a Pipeline like this would look like:

// First, initialize all the DataProcessors that will be used in the Pipeline
query1 := processors.NewSQLReader(db1, "SELECT * FROM source_table")
query2 := processors.NewSQLReader(db1, sqlGenerator1) // sqlGenerator1 would be a function that generates the query at run-time. See SQLReader docs.
custom1 := NewCustomDataProcessor1()
query3 := processors.NewSQLReader(db2, sqlGenerator2)
custom2 := NewCustomDataProcessor2()
custom3 := NewCustomDataProcessor3()
passthrough := processors.NewPassthrough()
writeMySQL := processors.NewSQLWriter(db3, "destination_table")
writeCSV := processors.NewCSVWriter(file)

// Next, construct and validate the PipelineLayout. Each DataProcessor
// is inserted into the layout via calls to ratchet.Do().
layout, err := ratchet.NewPipelineLayout(
        ratchet.NewPipelineStage(
                ratchet.Do(query1).Outputs(query2),
                ratchet.Do(query1).Outputs(custom1),
        ),
        ratchet.NewPipelineStage(
                ratchet.Do(query2).Outputs(query3, custom3),
                ratchet.Do(custom1).Outputs(custom2, custom3, passthrough),
        ),
        ratchet.NewPipelineStage(
                ratchet.Do(query3).Outputs(writeCSV),
                ratchet.Do(custom2).Outputs(writeCSV),
                ratchet.Do(custom3).Outputs(writeCSV),
                ratchet.Do(passthrough).Outputs(writeMySQL),
        ),
        ratchet.NewPipelineStage(
                ratchet.Do(writeCSV),
                ratchet.Do(writeMySQL),
        ),
)
if err != nil {
        // layout is invalid
        panic(err.Error())
}

// Finally, create and run the Pipeline
pipeline := ratchet.NewBranchingPipeline(layout)
err = <-pipeline.Run()

This example is only conceptual, the main points being to explain the flexibility you have when designing your Pipeline's layout and to demonstrate the syntax for constructing a new PipelineLayout.