I am attempting to get the Snowplow Scala collector to connect to Kinesis and pipe data into it. I have working pixel code which works correctly with the deprecated Cloudfront Collector pixel.
I downloaded the Snowplow Scala collector from the Snowplow website https://hub.docker.com/r/snowplow/scala-stream-collector-kinesis using Docker and installed it on an Ubuntu image on AWS Lightsail. I configured it with the following configuration file:
# Copyright (c) 2013-2020 Snowplow Analytics Ltd. All rights reserved.
# r:
#
# This program is licensed to you under the Apache License Version 2.0, and
# you may not use this file except in compliance with the Apache License
# Version 2.0. You may obtain a copy of the Apache License Version 2.0 at
# http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.
#
# Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
# distributed under the Apache License Version 2.0 is distributed on an "AS
# IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or
# implied. See the Apache License Version 2.0 for the specific language
# governing permissions and limitations there under.
# This file (config.hocon.sample) contains a template with
# configuration options for the Scala Stream Collector.
#
# To use, copy this to 'application.conf' and modify the configuration options.
# 'collector' contains configuration options for the main Scala collector.
collector {
# The collector runs as a web service specified on the following interface and port.
# interface = "p.corvidae.online"
interface = "0.0.0.0"
port = 8080
# optional SSL/TLS configuration
ssl {
enable = false
# whether to redirect HTTP to HTTPS
redirect = false
port = 9543
}
# The collector responds with a cookie to requests with a path that matches the 'vendor/version' protocol.
# The expected values are:
# - com.snowplowanalytics.snowplow/tp2 for Tracker Protocol 2
# - r/tp2 for redirects
# - com.snowplowanalytics.iglu/v1 for the Iglu Webhook
# Any path that matches the 'vendor/version' protocol will result in a cookie response, for use by custom webhooks
# downstream of the collector.
# But you can also map any valid (i.e. two-segment) path to one of the three defaults.
# Your custom path must be the key and the value must be one of the corresponding default paths. Both must be full
# valid paths starting with a leading slash.
# Pass in an empty map to avoid mapping.
paths {
# "/com.acme/track" = "/com.snowplowanalytics.snowplow/tp2"
# "/com.acme/redirect" = "/r/tp2"
# "/com.acme/iglu" = "/com.snowplowanalytics.iglu/v1"
}
# Configure the P3P policy header.
p3p {
policyRef = "/w3c/p3p.xml"
CP = "NOI DSP COR NID PSA OUR IND COM NAV STA"
}
# Cross domain policy configuration.
# If "enabled" is set to "false", the collector will respond with a 404 to the /crossdomain.xml
# route.
crossDomain {
enabled = false
# Domains that are granted access, *.acme.com will match http://acme.com and http://sub.acme.com
domains = [ "*" ]
# Whether to only grant access to HTTPS or both HTTPS and HTTP sources
secure = true
}
# The collector returns a cookie to clients for user identification
# with the following domain and expiration.
cookie {
enabled = true
expiration = "730 days" # e.g. "365 days"
# Network cookie name
# HK: Commented this ouet as it says it's optional and we are not sure what to use. #TODO
name = "sp"
# name = ${?COLLECTOR_COOKIE_NAME}
# The domain is optional and will make the cookie accessible to other
# applications on the domain. Comment out these lines to tie cookies to
# the collector's full domain.
# The domain is determined by matching the domains from the Origin header of the request
# to the list below. The first match is used. If no matches are found, the fallback domain will be used,
# if configured.
# If you specify a main domain, all subdomains on it will be matched.
# If you specify a subdomain, only that subdomain will be matched.
# Examples:
# domain.com will match domain.com, www.domain.com and secure.client.domain.com
# client.domain.com will match secure.client.domain.com but not domain.com or www.domain.com
domains = [
"{{cookieDomain1}}" # e.g. "domain.com" -> any origin domain ending with this will be matched and domain.com will be returned
"{{cookieDomain2}}" # e.g. "secure.anotherdomain.com" -> any origin domain ending with this will be matched and secure.anotherdomain.com will be returned
# ... more domains
]
# ... more domains
# If specified, the fallback domain will be used if none of the Origin header hosts matches the list of
# cookie domains configured above. (For example, if there is no Origin header.)
fallbackDomain = "<url>"
secure = false
httpOnly = false
# The sameSite is optional. You can choose to not specify the attribute, or you can use `Strict`,
# `Lax` or `None` to limit the cookie sent context.
# Strict: the cookie will only be sent along with "same-site" requests.
# Lax: the cookie will be sent with same-site requests, and with cross-site top-level navigation.
# None: the cookie will be sent with same-site and cross-site requests.
sameSite = "{{cookieSameSite}}"
}
# If you have a do not track cookie in place, the Scala Stream Collector can respect it by
# completely bypassing the processing of an incoming request carrying this cookie, the collector
# will simply reply by a 200 saying "do not track".
# The cookie name and value must match the configuration below, where the names of the cookies must
# match entirely and the value could be a regular expression.
doNotTrackCookie {
enabled = false
name = "sp_dnt"
value = "(do_not_track)"
}
# When enabled and the cookie specified above is missing, performs a redirect to itself to check
# if third-party cookies are blocked using the specified name. If they are indeed blocked,
# fallbackNetworkId is used instead of generating a new random one.
cookieBounce {
enabled = false
# The name of the request parameter which will be used on redirects checking that third-party
# cookies work.
name = "n3pc"
# Network user id to fallback to when third-party cookies are blocked.
fallbackNetworkUserId = "00000000-0000-4000-A000-000000000000"
# Optionally, specify the name of the header containing the originating protocol for use in the
# bounce redirect location. Use this if behind a load balancer that performs SSL termination.
# The value of this header must be http or https. Example, if behind an AWS Classic ELB.
forwardedProtocolHeader = "X-Forwarded-Proto"
}
# When enabled, redirect prefix `r/` will be enabled and its query parameters resolved.
# Otherwise the request prefixed with `r/` will be dropped with `404 Not Found`
# Custom redirects configured in `paths` can still be used.
enableDefaultRedirect = true
# When enabled, the redirect url passed via the `u` query parameter is scanned for a placeholder
# token. All instances of that token are replaced withe the network ID. If the placeholder isn't
# specified, the default value is `${SP_NUID}`.
redirectMacro {
enabled = false
# Optional custom placeholder token (defaults to the literal `${SP_NUID}`)
placeholder = "[TOKEN]"
}
# Customize response handling for requests for the root path ("/").
# Useful if you need to redirect to web content or privacy policies regarding the use of this collector.
rootResponse {
enabled = false
statusCode = 302
# Optional, defaults to empty map
headers = {
Location = "https://127.0.0.1/",
X-Custom = "something"
}
# Optional, defaults to empty string
body = "302, redirecting"
}
# Configuration related to CORS preflight requests
cors {
# The Access-Control-Max-Age response header indicates how long the results of a preflight
# request can be cached. -1 seconds disables the cache. Chromium max is 10m, Firefox is 24h.
accessControlMaxAge = 5 seconds
}
# Configuration of prometheus http metrics
prometheusMetrics {
# If metrics are enabled then all requests will be logged as prometheus metrics
# and '/metrics' endpoint will return the report about the requests
enabled = false
# Custom buckets for http_request_duration_seconds_bucket duration metric
#durationBucketsInSeconds = [0.1, 3, 10]
}
streams {
# Events which have successfully been collected will be stored in the good stream/topic
good = temp-snowplow-good
# Events that are too big (w.r.t Kinesis 1MB limit) will be stored in the bad stream/topic
bad = temp-snowplow-bad
# Whether to use the incoming event's ip as the partition key for the good stream/topic
# Note: Nsq does not make use of partition key.
useIpAddressAsPartitionKey = false
# Enable the chosen sink by uncommenting the appropriate configuration
sink {
# Choose between kinesis, google-pub-sub, kafka, nsq, or stdout.
# To use stdout, comment or remove everything in the "collector.streams.sink" section except
# "enabled" which should be set to "stdout".
enabled = kinesis
# Region where the streams are located
region = eu-west-1
## Optional endpoint url configuration to override aws kinesis endpoints,
## this can be used to specify local endpoints when using localstack
# customEndpoint = {{kinesisEndpoint}}
# customEndpoint = ${?COLLECTOR_STREAMS_SINK_CUSTOM_ENDPOINT}
# Thread pool size for Kinesis API requests
threadPoolSize = 10
# The following are used to authenticate for the Amazon Kinesis sink.
# If both are set to 'default', the default provider chain is used
# (see http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSJavaSDK/latest/javadoc/com/amazonaws/auth/DefaultAWSCredentialsProviderChain.html)
# If both are set to 'iam', use AWS IAM Roles to provision credentials.
# If both are set to 'env', use environment variables AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID and AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY
aws {
accessKey = "<>"
secretKey = "<>"
}
# Minimum and maximum backoff periods, in milliseconds
backoffPolicy {
minBackoff = 100
maxBackoff = 60000
}
# Or Google Pubsub
#googleProjectId = ID
## Minimum, maximum and total backoff periods, in milliseconds
## and multiplier between two backoff
#backoffPolicy {
# minBackoff = {{minBackoffMillis}}
# maxBackoff = {{maxBackoffMillis}}
# totalBackoff = {{totalBackoffMillis}} # must be >= 10000
# multiplier = {{backoffMultiplier}}
#}
# Or Kafka
#brokers = "{{kafkaBrokers}}"
## Number of retries to perform before giving up on sending a record
#retries = 0
# The kafka producer has a variety of possible configuration options defined at
# https://kafka.apache.org/documentation/#producerconfigs
# Some values are set to other values from this config by default:
# "bootstrap.servers" -> brokers
# retries -> retries
# "buffer.memory" -> buffer.byteLimit
# "linger.ms" -> buffer.timeLimit
#producerConf {
# acks = all
# "key.serializer" = "org.apache.kafka.common.serialization.StringSerializer"
# "value.serializer" = "org.apache.kafka.common.serialization.StringSerializer"
#}
# Or NSQ
## Host name for nsqd
#host = "{{nsqHost}}"
## TCP port for nsqd, 4150 by default
#port = {{nsqdPort}}
}
# Incoming events are stored in a buffer before being sent to Kinesis/Kafka.
# Note: Buffering is not supported by NSQ.
# The buffer is emptied whenever:
# - the number of stored records reaches record-limit or
# - the combined size of the stored records reaches byte-limit or
# - the time in milliseconds since the buffer was last emptied reaches time-limit
buffer {
byteLimit = 4096
recordLimit = 100 # Not supported by Kafka; will be ignored
timeLimit = 3600
}
}
}
# Akka has a variety of possible configuration options defined at
# http://doc.akka.io/docs/akka/current/scala/general/configuration.html
akka {
loglevel = DEBUG # 'OFF' for no logging, 'DEBUG' for all logging.
loggers = ["akka.event.slf4j.Slf4jLogger"]
# akka-http is the server the Stream collector uses and has configurable options defined at
# http://doc.akka.io/docs/akka-http/current/scala/http/configuration.html
http.server {
# To obtain the hostname in the collector, the 'remote-address' header
# should be set. By default, this is disabled, and enabling it
# adds the 'Remote-Address' header to every request automatically.
remote-address-header = on
raw-request-uri-header = on
# Define the maximum request length (the default is 2048)
parsing {
max-uri-length = 32768
uri-parsing-mode = relaxed
}
}
# By default setting `collector.ssl` relies on JSSE (Java Secure Socket
# Extension) to enable secure communication.
# To override the default settings set the following section as per
# https://lightbend.github.io/ssl-config/ExampleSSLConfig.html
# ssl-config {
# debug = {
# ssl = true
# }
# keyManager = {
# stores = [
# {type = "PKCS12", classpath = false, path = "/etc/ssl/mycert.p12", password = "mypassword" }
# ]
# }
# loose {
# disableHostnameVerification = false
# }
# }
}
I then set up an Analytics Application on AWS Kinesis (selecting SQL as the runtime) and attempted to connect it to the stream from the Scala collector however I have 3 problems as seen in the image below:
-
Only the first parameter if the pixel payload is being communicated to Kinesis (“aid” in the example)
-
Kinesis seems to be struggling to consistently interpret the schema coming from the collector, often defaulting to one column of Varchar(5000) format
-
The collector seems to send non UTF-8 characters in the payload resulting in the process failing at the Real-Time Analytics stage of the Kinesis Data Analytics saying either that there are no rows in the source stream or that there are uninterpretable characters.
I can pipe AWS test stream through Kinesis to S3 without difficulty so I think it unlikely that the issue lies with my Kinesis set-up.
Can anyone explain to me how I can configure the Snowplow Scala collector so that I receive all the payload parameters being sent by the pixel in a way that Kinesis can interpret so that I can pipe it to S3?