FlinkCEP - Complex event processing for Flink

FlinkCEP is the complex event processing library for Flink. It allows you to easily detect complex event patterns in a stream of endless data. Complex events can then be constructed from matching sequences. This gives you the opportunity to quickly get hold of what’s really important in your data.

Getting Started

If you want to jump right in, you have to set up a Flink program. Next, you have to add the FlinkCEP dependency to the pom.xml of your project.

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.apache.flink</groupId>
  <artifactId>flink-cep_2.10</artifactId>
  <version>1.0.3</version>
</dependency>

Note that FlinkCEP is currently not part of the binary distribution. See linking with it for cluster execution here.

Now you can start writing your first CEP program using the pattern API.

DataStream<Event> input = ...

Pattern<Event, ?> pattern = Pattern.begin("start").where(evt -> evt.getId() == 42)
    .next("middle").subtype(SubEvent.class).where(subEvt -> subEvt.getVolume() >= 10.0)
    .followedBy("end").where(evt -> evt.getName().equals("end"));

PatternStream<Event> patternStream = CEP.pattern(input, pattern);

DataStream<Alert> result = patternStream.select(pattern -> {
    return createAlertFrom(pattern);
});

Note that we have used Java 8 lambdas here to make the example more succinct.

The Pattern API

The pattern API allows you to quickly define complex event patterns.

Each pattern consists of multiple stages or what we call states. In order to go from one state to the next, the user can specify conditions. These conditions can be the contiguity of events or a filter condition on an event.

Each pattern has to start with an initial state:

Pattern<Event, ?> start = Pattern.<Event>begin("start");

Each state must have an unique name to identify the matched events later on. Additionally, we can specify a filter condition for the event to be accepted as the start event via the where method.

start.where(new FilterFunction<Event>() {
    @Override
    public boolean filter(Event value) {
        return ... // some condition
    }
});

We can also restrict the type of the accepted event to some subtype of the initial event type (here Event) via the subtype method.

start.subtype(SubEvent.class).where(new FilterFunction<SubEvent>() {
    @Override
    public boolean filter(SubEvent value) {
        return ... // some condition
    }
});

As it can be seen here, the subtype condition can also be combined with an additional filter condition on the subtype. In fact you can always provide multiple conditions by calling where and subtype multiple times. These conditions will then be combined using the logical AND operator.

Next, we can append further states to detect complex patterns. We can control the contiguity of two succeeding events to be accepted by the pattern.

Strict contiguity means that two matching events have to succeed directly. This means that no other events can occur in between. A strict contiguity pattern state can be created via the next method.

Pattern<Event, ?> strictNext = start.next("middle");

Non-strict contiguity means that other events are allowed to occur in-between two matching events. A non-strict contiguity pattern state can be created via the followedBy method.

It is also possible to define a temporal constraint for the pattern to be valid. For example, one can define that a pattern should occur within 10 seconds via the within method.

next.within(Time.seconds(10));

Pattern<Event, ?> nonStrictNext = start.followedBy("middle");

Pattern<Event, ?> start = Pattern.<Event>begin("start");

Pattern<Event, ?> next = start.next("next");

Pattern<Event, ?> next = start.followedBy("next");

patternState.where(new FilterFunction<Event>() {
    @Override
    public boolean filter(Event value) throws Exception {
        return ... // some condition
    }
});

patternState.subtype(SubEvent.class);

patternState.within(Time.seconds(10));

Detecting Patterns

In order to run a stream of events against your pattern, you have to create a PatternStream. Given an input stream input and a pattern pattern, you create the PatternStream by calling

DataStream<Event> input = ...
Pattern<Event, ?> pattern = ...

PatternStream<Event> patternStream = CEP.pattern(input, pattern);

Selecting from Patterns

Once you have obtained a PatternStream you can select from detected event sequences via the select or flatSelect methods. The select method requires a PatternSelectFunction implementation. A PatternSelectFunction has a select method which is called for each matching event sequence. It receives a map of string/event pairs of the matched events. The string is defined by the name of the state to which the event has been matched. The select method can return exactly one result.

class MyPatternSelectFunction<IN, OUT> implements PatternSelectFunction<IN, OUT> {
    @Override
    public OUT select(Map<String, IN> pattern) {
        IN startEvent = pattern.get("start");
        IN endEvent = pattern.get("end");

        return new OUT(startEvent, endEvent);
    }
}

A PatternFlatSelectFunction is similar to the PatternSelectFunction, with the only distinction that it can return an arbitrary number of results. In order to do this, the select method has an additional Collector parameter which is used for the element output.

class MyPatternFlatSelectFunction<IN, OUT> implements PatternFlatSelectFunction<IN, OUT> {
    @Override
    public void select(Map<String, IN> pattern, Collector<OUT> collector) {
        IN startEvent = pattern.get("start");
        IN endEvent = pattern.get("end");

        for (int i = 0; i < startEvent.getValue(); i++ ) {
            collector.collect(new OUT(startEvent, endEvent));
        }
    }
}

Examples

The following example detects the pattern start, middle(name = "error") -> end(name = "critical") on a keyed data stream of Events. The events are keyed by their ids and a valid pattern has to occur within 10 seconds. The whole processing is done with event time.

StreamExecutionEnvironment env = ...
env.setStreamTimeCharacteristic(TimeCharacteristic.EventTime);

DataStream<Event> input = ...

DataStream<Event> partitionedInput = input.keyBy(new KeySelector<Event, Integer>() {
	@Override
	public Integer getKey(Event value) throws Exception {
		return value.getId();
	}
});

Pattern<Event, ?> pattern = Pattern.<Event>begin("start")
	.next("middle").where(new FilterFunction<Event>() {
		@Override
		public boolean filter(Event value) throws Exception {
			return value.getName().equals("error");
		}
	}).followedBy("end").where(new FilterFunction<Event>() {
		@Override
		public boolean filter(Event value) throws Exception {
			return value.getName().equals("critical");
		}
	}).within(Time.seconds(10));

PatternStream<Event> patternStream = CEP.from(partitionedInput, pattern);

DataStream<Alert> alerts = patternStream.select(new PatternSelectFunction<Event, Alert>() {
	@Override
	public Alert select(Map<String, Event> pattern) throws Exception {
		return new Alert(pattern.get("start"), pattern.get("end"))
	}
});