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Updated on 2025-04-13

Python integrates Flink and Kafka in real-time data stream processing

With the rise of big data and real-time computing, real-time data stream processing has become increasingly important. Flink and Kafka are two key technologies in the real-time data stream processing field. Flink is a stream processing framework for processing and analyzing data streams in real time, while Kafka is a distributed stream processing platform for building real-time data pipelines and applications. This article will provide a detailed introduction to how to integrate Flink and Kafka with Python to build a powerful real-time data stream processing system.

1. Introduction to Flink

Apache Flink is an open source stream processing framework for handling bounded and unbounded data streams at high throughput and low latency. Flink provides rich APIs and libraries, supporting event-driven applications, integrated streaming batches, complex event processing, etc. The main features of Flink include:

Event-driven: Flink is able to process every event in the data stream and produces results immediately.

Streaming batch integration: Flink provides a unified API that can handle both bounded and unbounded data streams at the same time.

High Throughput and Low Latency: Flink is able to maintain low latency at high throughput.

Fault tolerant and state management: Flink provides powerful fault tolerant mechanisms and state management functions.

2. Introduction to Kafka

Apache Kafka is a distributed stream processing platform for building real-time data pipelines and applications. Kafka can handle high-throughput data streams and supports data persistence, data partitioning, data replicas and other features. The main features of Kafka include:

High Throughput: Kafka is able to handle high throughput data streams.

Scalability: Kafka supports data partitioning and distributed consumption, and can scale horizontally.

Persistence: Kafka persists data to disk and supports data replicas to ensure that data is not lost.

Real-time: Kafka can support millisecond delays.

3. Flink and Kafka integration

Flink and Kafka integration is an important application scenario for real-time data stream processing. By integrating Flink and Kafka together, a powerful real-time data stream processing system can be built. Flink provides Kafka connectors that can easily read data streams from Kafka topics and write processed data streams to Kafka topics.

3.1 Install Flink and Kafka

First, we need to install Flink and Kafka. You can refer to the official documentation of Flink and Kafka for installation.

3.2 Create Kafka Theme

In Kafka, data flows are organized as themes. You can use Kafka's command line tool to create a theme.

--create --zookeeper localhost:2181 --replication-factor 1 --partitions 1 --topic test

3.3 Consumption of Kafka data using Flink

In Flink, you can use FlinkKafkaConsumer to consume data from Kafka topics. First, you need to create a Flink execution environment and configure the Kafka connector.

from  import StreamExecutionEnvironment
from  import FlinkKafkaConsumer
env = StreamExecutionEnvironment.get_execution_environment()
properties = {
    '': 'localhost:9092',
    '': 'test-group',
    '': 'latest'
}
consumer = FlinkKafkaConsumer(
    topic='test',
    properties=properties,
    deserialization_schema=SimpleStringSchema()
)
stream = env.add_source(consumer)

3.4 Using Flink to process data

Next, you can use Flink's API to process the data stream. For example, each event in the data stream may be processed using the map function.

from  import MapFunction
class MyMapFunction(MapFunction):
    def map(self, value):
        return ()
stream = (MyMapFunction())

3.5 Write data to Kafka using Flink

The processed data can be written to the Kafka topic using FlinkKafkaProducer.

from  import FlinkKafkaProducer
producer_properties = {
    '': 'localhost:9092'
}
producer = FlinkKafkaProducer(
    topic='output',
    properties=producer_properties,
    serialization_schema=SimpleStringSchema()
)
stream.add_sink(producer)

3.6 Execute Flink jobs

Finally, the Flink job needs to be executed.

('my_flink_job')

4. Advanced Features

4.1 Status management and error tolerance

Flink provides rich state management and fault tolerance mechanisms, which can maintain state when processing data flows and ensure that state can be restored in the event of a failure.

4.2 Time window and watermark

Flink supports time windows and watermarks, and can handle window aggregation based on event time and processing time.

4.3 Integration of flow batches

Flink supports stream batch integration, and can use the same API to handle bounded and unbounded data streams. This allows for flexibility in selecting stream processing or batch modes when processing data, and even using both in the same application.

4.4 Dynamic Scaling

Flink supports dynamic scaling, and can increase or decrease resources as needed to cope with changes in data traffic.

5. Practical cases

Below we use a simple practical case to combine the above components to create a simple real-time data stream processing system.

5.1 Create a Kafka Producer

First, we need to create a Kafka producer to send data to the Kafka topic.

from kafka import KafkaProducer
producer = KafkaProducer(bootstrap_servers='localhost:9092', value_serializer=lambda v: ('utf-8'))
for _ in range(10):
    ('test', value=f'message {_}')
    ()

5.2 Flink consumes Kafka data and processes it

Next, we consume data in Kafka using Flink and perform simple processing.

from  import StreamExecutionEnvironment
from  import FlinkKafkaConsumer, FlinkKafkaProducer
from  import MapFunction
class UpperCaseMapFunction(MapFunction):
    def map(self, value):
        return ()
env = StreamExecutionEnvironment.get_execution_environment()
properties = {
    '': 'localhost:9092',
    '': 'test-group',
    '': 'latest'
}
consumer = FlinkKafkaConsumer(
    topic='test',
    properties=properties,
    deserialization_schema=SimpleStringSchema()
)
stream = env.add_source(consumer)
stream = (UpperCaseMapFunction())
producer_properties = {
    '': 'localhost:9092'
}
producer = FlinkKafkaProducer(
    topic='output',
    properties=producer_properties,
    serialization_schema=SimpleStringSchema()
)
stream.add_sink(producer)
('my_flink_job')

5.3 Consumption of Kafka-processed data

Finally, we create a Kafka consumer for consuming processed data.

from kafka import KafkaConsumer
consumer = KafkaConsumer(
    'output',
    bootstrap_servers='localhost:9092',
    auto_offset_reset='earliest',
    value_deserializer=lambda v: ('utf-8')
)
for message in consumer:
    print()

6. Conclusion

This article details how to integrate Flink and Kafka with Python to build a powerful real-time data stream processing system. We show you how to combine these technologies to create a system that can process and convert data streams in real time with a simple example. However, the development of actual real-time data stream processing systems is much more complex, involving multiple aspects such as the generation, processing, storage and visualization of data streams. In actual development, we also need to consider how to process massive data, how to improve the concurrency and availability of the system, and how to deal with fluctuations in data traffic. In addition, with the development of technology, Flink and Kafka are constantly introducing new features and algorithms to improve the efficiency and accuracy of data processing.

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