id: functions-overview title: Pulsar Functions overview sidebar_label: “Overview”

This section introduces the following content:

What are Pulsar Functions

Pulsar Functions are a serverless computing framework that runs on top of Pulsar and processes messages in the following way:

  • consumes messages from one or more topics,
  • applies a user-defined processing logic to the messages,
  • publishes the outputs of the messages to other topics.

The following figure illustrates the computing process of a function.

Pulsar Functions execute user-defined code on data published to Pulsar topics

A function receives messages from one or more input topics. Each time messages are received, the function completes the following steps:

  1. Consumes the messages in the input topics.
  2. Applies a customized processing logic to the messages and: a) writes output messages to an output topic in Pulsar b) writes logs to a log topic if it is configured (for debugging purposes) c) writes state to BookKeeper (if it is configured)

You can write functions in Java, Python, and Go. For example, you can use Pulsar Functions to set up the following processing chain:

  • A Python function listens for the raw-sentences topic and “sanitizes” incoming strings (removing extraneous white space and converting all characters to lowercase) and then publishes the results to a sanitized-sentences topic.
  • A Java function listens for the sanitized-sentences topic, counts the number of times each word appears within a specified time window, and publishes the results to a results topic.
  • A Python function listens for the results topic and writes the results to a MySQL table.

See Develop Pulsar Functions for more details.

Why use Pulsar Functions

Pulsar Functions provide the capabilities to perform simple computations on the messages before they are routed to consumers.

Pulsar Functions can be characterized as Lambda-style functions that are specifically designed and integrated with Pulsar as the underlying message bus. The framework of Pulsar Functions provides a simple computing framework on your Pulsar cluster and takes care of the underlying details of sending/receiving messages. You only need to focus on the business logic and run it as Pulsar Functions to maximize the value of your data and enjoy the benefits of:

  • Simplified deployment and operations - you can create a data pipeline without deploying a separate Stream Processing Engine (SPE), such as Apache Storm, Apache Heron, or Apache Flink.
  • Serverless computing (when Kubernetes runtime is used)
  • Maximized developer productivity (both language-native interfaces and SDKs for Java/Python/Go).
  • Easy troubleshooting

Use cases

Here are two real-world use cases to help you understand the capabilities of Pulsar Functions and what they can be used for.

Word count example

This figure illustrates the process of implementing the classic word count example using Pulsar Functions. It calculates a sum of the occurrences of every individual word published to a given topic.

Word count example using Pulsar Functions

Content-based routing example

For example, a function takes items (strings) as input and publishes them to either a fruits or vegetables topic, depending on the item. If an item is neither fruit nor vegetable, a warning is logged to a log topic.

This figure demonstrates the process of implementing a content-based routing using Pulsar Functions.

Count-based routing example using Pulsar Functions

User flow

Admins/operators

  1. Set up function workers.
  2. Configure function runtime.
  3. Deploy a function.

Developers

  1. Develop a function.
  2. Debug a function.
  3. Package a function.
  4. Deploy a function.

More reference