Redis Lists

Keda based Message Queue Trigger for Redis

This tutorial will demonstrate how to use a Redis List trigger to invoke a function. We’ll assume you have Fission and Kubernetes installed. If not, please head over to the install guide.

You will also need Redis setup which is reachable from the Fission Kubernetes cluster.

Installation

If you want to setup Redis server on the Kubernetes cluster, you can use the information here.

Overview

Before we dive into details, let’s walk through overall flow of event and functions involved.

  1. A Go producer function (producerfunc) which acts as a producer and drops a message in a Redis queue named request-topic.
  2. Fission Redis trigger activates and invokes another function (consumerfunc) with message received from producerfunc.
  3. The consumer function (consumerfunc) gets body of message and returns a response.
  4. Fission Redis trigger takes the response of consumer function (consumerfunc) and drops the message in a response queue named response-topic. If there is an error, the message is dropped in error queue named error-topic.

Building the app

Producer Function

The producer function is a go program which creates a message with timestamp and drops into a queue request-topic. For brevity all values have been hard coded in the code itself.

package main

import (
    "context"
    "encoding/json"
    "fmt"
    "net/http"
    "strconv"
    "time"

    "github.com/go-redis/redis/v8"
)

type publish_data struct {
    Sid  int    `json:"sid"`
    Data string `json:"data"`
    Time int64  `json:"time"`
}

func Handler(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {

    address := "redis-headless.ot-operators.svc.cluster.local:6379"
    password := ""
    listName := "request-topic"

    var ctx = context.Background()
    rdb := redis.NewClient(&redis.Options{
        Addr:     address,
        Password: password,
        DB:       0,
    })

    for i := 0; i < 10; i++ {
        current_time := time.Now()
        secs := current_time.Unix()
        resp := publish_data{
            Sid:  i,
            Data: "Message number: " + strconv.Itoa(i+1),
            Time: secs,
        }
        resp_json, _ := json.Marshal(resp)
        _, err := rdb.RPush(ctx, listName, resp_json).Result()
        if err != nil {
            w.Write([]byte(fmt.Sprintf("Failed to publish message to topic %s: %v", listName, err)))
            return
        }
    }
    w.Write([]byte(fmt.Sprintf("Successfully sent to %s", listName)))
}

We are now ready to package this code and create a function so that we can execute it later. Following commands will create a environment, package and function. Verify that build for package succeeded before proceeding.

$ mkdir redis_test && cd redis_test
$ go mod init

# create a producer.go file with above code replacing the placeholder values with actual ones
$ go mod tidy
$ zip -qr redis.zip *

$ fission env create --name goenv --image fission/go-env-1.16 --builder fission/go-builder-1.16
$ fission package create --env goenv --src redis.zip
$ fission fn create --name producerfunc --env goenv --pkg redis-zip-zlre --entrypoint Handler
$ fission package info --name redis-zip-zlre
Name:        redis-pkg
Environment: goenv
Status:      succeeded
Build Logs:
Building in directory /usr/src/redis-zip-zlre-2gucll

Consumer function

The consumer function is nodejs function which takes the body of the request, appends a “Hello” and returns the resulting string.

module.exports = async function (context) {
  console.log(context.request.body);
  let obj = context.request.body;
  return {
    status: 200,
    body: "Hello " + JSON.stringify(obj),
  };
};

Let’s create the environment and function:

fission env create --name nodeenv --image fission/node-env
fission fn create --name consumerfunc --env nodeenv --code hello.js

Connecting via trigger

We have both the functions ready but the connection between them is the missing glue. Let’s create a message queue trigger which will invoke the consumerfunc every time there is a message in request-topic queue. The response will be sent to response-topic queue and in case of consumerfunc invocation fails, the error is written to error-topic queue.

fission mqt create --name redistest --function consumerfunc --mqtype redis --mqtkind keda --topic request-topic --resptopic response-topic --errortopic error-topic --maxretries 3 --metadata address=redis-headless.ot-operators.svc.cluster.local:6379 --metadata listLength=10 --metadata listName=request-topic

Parameter list:

  • address - Host and port of redis server
  • listLength - Length of list after which the function should be triggered
  • listName - The list to be monitored

Testing it out

Let’s invoke the producer function so that the queue request-topic gets some messages and we can see the consumer function in action.

$ fission fn test --name producerfunc
Successfully sent to request-topic

To add authentication to your function calls, refer to our Fission Authentication guide.

There are a couple of ways you can verify that the consumerfunc is called:

  • Check the logs of mqtrigger-redis pods:
{"level":"info","ts":1630296782.86601,"caller":"app/main.go:58","msg":"Message sending to response successful"}
{"level":"info","ts":1630296782.8708184,"caller":"app/main.go:58","msg":"Message sending to response successful"}
  • Connect to your redis server and check if messages are coming in the response-topic queue.

Introducing an error

Let’s introduce an error scenario - instead of consumer function returning a 200, you can return 400 which will cause an error:

module.exports = async function (context) {
  console.log(context.request.body);
  let obj = context.request.body;
  return {
    status: 400,
    body: "Hello " + JSON.stringify(obj),
  };
};

Update the function with new code and invoke the producer function:

$ fission fn update --name consumerfunc --code hello.js

$ fission fn test --name producerfunc
Successfully sent to input

We can verify the message in error queue as we did earlier:

  • Connect to your redis server and check if messages are coming in error-topic queue.