PIP-184: Topic specific consumer priorityLevel

The Pulsar Java consumer supports setting a priority level for priority message dispatch in shared subscription consumers and priority assignment in failover subscription consumers. See the ConsumerBuilder.html#priorityLevel(int) Javadoc for a detailed functional description. The Pulsar Java consumer also supports consuming from multiple topics. However, it is not possible to set a different priority level for different topics in the same Consumer instance.

This behaviour is desirable in some use cases. For example, a consumer processing region specific topics might wish to configure region stickiness - A multi-region application might be consuming from topics events-us-east-1 and events-eu-west-1. Consumers in all regions should be configured to consume all topics to ensure data completeness. However, to ensure low latency, the us-east-1 consumer would need to set a higher priority level for the us-east-1 topic. Similarly, the eu-west-1 consumer would need to set a higher priority level for the eu-west-1 topic.

Without the ability to configure different priority levels for different topics, the developer would have to create multiple consumer instances and have to manage the consumption from them in their application code. This feature provides developer convenience to keep application code the same regardless of whether this is a requirement or not.

Goal

Update the Java client API to allow the configuration of different priority levels for different topics.

Do so in such a way that supports the addition of other topic specific configuration options or overrides in the future.

Issues will be created to track feature parity in the other client implementations for this PIP.

API Changes

In pulsar-client-api, update ConsumerBuilder to include two new methods:

public interface ConsumerBuilder<T> extends Cloneable {
    ...

    TopicConsumerBuilder<T> topicConfiguration(String topicName);

    ConsumerBuilder<T> topicConfiguration(String topicName,
            java.util.function.Consumer<TopicConsumerBuilder<T>> builderConsumer);

    TopicConsumerBuilder<T> topicConfiguration(Pattern topicsPattern);

    ConsumerBuilder<T> topicConfiguration(Pattern topicsPattern,
            java.util.function.Consumer<TopicConsumerBuilder<T>> builderConsumer);
}

Create a new interface:

public interface TopicConsumerBuilder<T> {
    TopicConsumerBuilder<T> priorityLevel(int priorityLevel);

    ConsumerBuilder<T> build();
}

In pulsar-client-original, update ConsumerConfigurationData to include a new field:

@Data
public class ConsumerConfigurationData<T> implements Serializable, Cloneable {
    ...

    private List<TopicConsumerConfigurationData> topicConfigurations = new ArrayList<>();
}

Create a topic configuration class:

@Data
public class TopicConsumerConfigurationData implements Serializable {
    private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;

    private TopicNameMatcher topicNameMatcher;
    private int priorityLevel;

    public interface TopicNameMatcher extends Serializable {
        boolean matches(String topicName);
    }
}

Then, in ConsumerImpl the appropriate topic configuration can be selected based on the topic being subscribed to. Since the topic configuration is effectively keyed by a topic name or pattern, it’s possible for the user to be able configure multiple topic configurations that match the same concrete topic name. In this case the first topic name match should be selected.

TopicConsumerConfigurationData getMatchingTopicConfiguration(String topicName,
        ConsumerConfigurationData conf) {
    return topicConfigurations.stream()
        .filter(topicConf -> topicConf.getTopicNameMatcher().matches(topicName))
        .findFirst()
        .orElseGet(() -> TopicConsumerConfigurationData.of(topicName, conf));
}

Example Usage:

pulsarClient.newConsumer()
    .topicsPattern("events.*")
    .priorityLevel(1)
    .topicConfiguration(Pattern.compile(".*us-east-1"), b -> b.priorityLevel(0))
    .subscribe();

or

pulsarClient.newConsumer()
    .topicsPattern("events.*")
    .priorityLevel(1)
    .topicConfiguration(Pattern.compile(".*us-east-1"))
        .priorityLevel(0)
        .build()
    .subscribe();

Rejected Alternatives

• Extend the existing ConsumerBuilder rather than introducing a nested, topic specific builder class.

Rejection reason: Does not provide a clear API to discover and extend other topic specific configuration options and overrides.

public interface ConsumerBuilder<T> extends Cloneable {
    ...

    ConsumerBuilder<T> topicPriorityLevel(String topicNameOrPattern, int priorityLevel);
}

Example usage:

pulsarClient.newConsumer()
    .topicsPattern("events.*")
    .priorityLevel(1)
    .topicPriorityLevel(".*us-east-1", 0)
    .subscribe();

• Provide a configurator interface to configure options and overrides at runtime

Rejection reason: Not compatible with ConsumerBuilder.loadConf.

@Data
class TopicConsumerConfigurationData {
    private int priorityLevel;
}

interface TopicConsumerConfigurator extends Serializable {
   void configure(String topicName, TopicConsumerConfigurationData topicConf);
}

public interface ConsumerBuilder<T> extends Cloneable {
    ...

    ConsumerBuilder<T> topicConfigurator(TopicConsumerConfigurator configurator);
}

Example usage:

pulsarClient.newConsumer()
    .topicsPattern("events.*")
    .priorityLevel(1)
    .topicConfigurator((topicName, topicConf) -> {
        if (topicName.endsWith("us-east-1") {
            topicConf.setPriorityLevel(0);
        }
    })
    .subscribe();