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ETL JS

Extract, Transform, and Load sharable and repeatable.

NPM Version Linux Build Windows Build Test Coverage Known Vulnerabilities CodeFactor FOSSA Status

const { ETL, Local, CommandsMod } = require("@lpezet/etl-js");
var template = {
  myETLActivity: {
    commands: {
      say_hello: {
        command: "printf 'hello world!'"
      }
    }
  }
};
var myETL = new ETL(new Local());
new CommandsMod().register(myETL);

myETL.process(template);

Or with TypeScript:

import { ETL, Local, CommandsMod } from "@lpezet/etl-js";
const template: any = {
  myETLActivity: {
    commands: {
      say_hello: {
        command: "printf 'hello world!'"
      }
    }
  }
};
const myETL = new ETL(new Local());
new CommandsMod().register(myETL);

myETL.process(template);

Table of Contents

Installation

This is a Node.js module available through the npm registry.

Before installing, download and install Node.js. Node.js 10.0 or higher is required.

Installation is done using the npm install command:

$ npm install @lpezet/etl-js

Features

* Template-based process (JSON, YAML) to express steps and activities as part of ETL
* Extensible behavior via mods
* Tags allowing more dynamic behavior
* Leverage your familiar/preapproved existing tools (program binaries like mysql, mysqlimport, etc., linux binaries, etc.)

Why/when would I need this?

ETL-JS is a simple ETL glue represented by an ETL-JS Template. Typically, you'd use ETL-JS to help with your existing ETL processes.

ETL-JS will NOT help you figure out how to dump data from MySQL. And while using ETL-JS to learn how to export MySQL data might help in the long run, you might get more frustrated short term and give up quickly. It would be better to figure out first how to get your data out of MySQL using whatever tool you have at your disposal (the closer to the product the better) before looking into ETL-JS.

The best here is to first figure out how to get those datasets and processes you need, out of your sub-systems, using those sub-system tools or other third party tools you already have (e.g. mysqlimport, pgLoader, HPCC Systems Spray/De-spray, etc.).

Once you have all that, you need to figure out how to coordinate it all. If you can already do it all easily with the same tool(s), ETL-JS may not be of much help (but read on, who knows). If you start scripting/coding (bash, JS, python, etc.) to stich things up then stop and take a good look at ETL-JS.

Here's a way to see it:

  1. (bash, curl) Download a file from a website, an (s)ftp site or secure site
  2. (bash, unzip, grep/sed) Do some slight processing with it (e.g. extract, rename files or even filter content of some files)
  3. (mysql) Load that into another system
  4. (mysql) Run some queries/process in that system
  5. (mysql) Export the final result(s)
  6. (bash, awscli) Potentially doing something with the results (e.g. email/share, upload to AWS S3)

In parenthesis are the tools I would use to accomplish those steps. You can easily see that it's a mix of things: standard linux binaries (curl, unzip, grep/sed), a database binary (mysql), and AWS Command Line Interface (awscli). I could script it all in either bash or in NodeJS. I could then add it to a source repository and share this ETL process. To make it more readable I could save the queries in different files (instead of a giant convoluted bash/JS script), make the MySQL server IP/Port more configurable (to switch between CI/QA/Prod environment), start handling foreseable errors (file missing, not compressed, no data to export, etc.), and at that point I'd have quite a lot of code and files to manage already. Also the essence of the process will get lost in all those lines of code and files.

A good and concrete example of an ETL-JS Template can be found here: Precipitation & snowfall summary for specific weather stations.

Concept

ETL-JS has been born from the need to script different activities as part of simple yet important extract, load, and transform processes. The idea is to be able to share and easily repeat activities over and over as needed, and leverage existing tools.

An ETL template is basically composed of an etlSets element and its activities as such:

etlSets:
  default:
    - activity1
    - activity2
activity1:
  step1:
    something: "something"
  step2:
    somethingelse: "somethingelse"
activity2:
  step1:
    some: "some"

Each activity contains step handled by Mods. Each mod typically perfom one or more tasks. A template can just be a single activity, as shown earlier in the introduction. Something like this will therefore suffice:

activity1:
  step1:
    something: "something"
  step2:
    somethingelse: "somethingelse"

Security

Commands, scripts and more can be executed as part of the Mods defined in the template. Therefore, you should make sure to use only the Mods you trust in your ETL Template.

Usage

The quickest way to get started is to use ETL-JS via command line, with ETL-JS CLI.

Install the executable:

$ npm install -g @lpezet/etl-js-cli

Initialize process:

$ etl-js init

Edit settings.yml, to specify the type of executor to use:

etl:
  executor: local1

executors:
  local1:
    type: local

Create ETL template, hello.yml:

etlSets:
  default:
    - step1
    - step2
step1:
  commands:
    orion_pic:
      command: printf "orion-nebula-xlarge_web.jpg"
      var: "picture"
step2:
  files:
    /tmp/orion-nebula.jpg:
      source: https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/{{ vars.picture }}

This ETL template makes use of tags, which will be explained a little later. WARNING: This template will effectively download a JPG file. Open it as your own risk.

Run template:

$ etl-js run hello.yaml

Mods

Mods are features of the ETL template. They execute code, download files, import data into MySQL database, etc. The idea is to leverage as much as possible of the existing and be as efficient as possible. For more details, see the Mods page.

Control Flow

Mods can decide whether to skip the remaining steps for a given activity, or even terminate (exit) the process. Use cases can be:

  • Mod detects that no new data has been found, decides to exit the ETL process.
  • Mod detects that data didn't change and decides not to continue the current activity of doing work already done before

It's up to Mods to expose that functionality. For example, the Commands Mod expose the following properties:

skip_on_test_failed: true|false
exit_on_test_failed: true|false

Tags

Tags can be used to make the process more dynamic. You might want your ETL process to start with a step figuring out which files to ingest (e.g. only new ones). And you would want the next step to download those files and only those files. This means that, at the time of writing your ETL template, you do not know which files will be processed. That's where tags come in. You have seen those tags already in the Getting Started section. Here it is again:

etlSets:
  default:
    - step1
    - step2
step1:
  commands:
    orion_pic:
      command: printf "orion-nebula-xlarge_web.jpg"
      var: file_to_download
step2:
  files:
    /tmp/orion-nebula.jpg:
      source: https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/{{ $.vars.file_to_download }}

The tag here is {{ $.vars.file_to_download }}. It basically refers to the var of the step1 command orion_pic.

The context used in tags is as follows:

vars:
	...vars go here...
env:
	...environment variables here from process.env.....

Here's another example using tags and making use of the result_as_json attribute of the commands mod. The result of the command will be parsed and stored as JSON instead of a string. This allows us to, for example, use the result as an array to download multiple files. The files mod will interpret that array and download multiple files.

var template = {
  etlSets: {
    default: [ 'step1', 'step2' ]
  },
  step1: {
    commands: {
      "file_to_download": {
        command: "printf '[\"PIA08653/PIA08653~small.jpg\",\"PIA21073/PIA21073~small.jpg\"]'",
        result_as_json: true
        var: files_to_download
      }
    }
  },
  step2: {
    files: {
      "/tmp/{{ $.vars.file_to_download }}": {
        source: "https://images-assets.nasa.gov/image/{{ vars.files_to_download }}"
      }
    }
  }
};

In step2, the files mod is used to specify a dynamic file to download with tags. Each file stored in files_to_download variable, will be downloaded from https://images-assets.nasa.gov/image/ and stored in /tmp/.

Events

ETL will emit some events during the ETL process.

  • activityDone( activityId, error, data, activityIndex, totalActivities ) - An activity has been completed (with or without error). The activityId is the name of the activity as specified in the template, the activityIndex is the order number the activity has been executed and the totalActivities represent the total number of activities to be run.

Results

OBSOLETE: rework done, need doc to be updated. Advice is to NOT rely on Mod results, but use the Content with vars & env for tags.

The ETL process() method returns a Promise. Upon success, the data resolved will contain the results of the process and each activity.

Reusing the advanced template from the Tags section:

var template = {
  etlSets: {
    default: [ 'step1', 'step2' ]
  },
  step1: {
    commands: {
      "file_to_download": {
        command: "printf '[\"PIA08653/PIA08653~small.jpg\",\"PIA21073/PIA21073~small.jpg\"]'",
        result_as_json: true
        var: files_to_download
      }
    }
  },
  step2: {
    files: {
      "/tmp/{{ vars.file_to_download }}": {
        source: "https://images-assets.nasa.gov/image/{{ vars.file_to_download }}"
      }
    }
  }
};
ETL.process( template ).then(function( pResults ) {
  console.log( util.inspect(pResults, false, null, true) );
});

, the result would be (some omission for brevity):

{ etl: { exit: false },
  step1:
   { commands:
      { file_to_download:
         { error: null,
           result:
            [ 'PIA08653/PIA08653~small.jpg', 'PIA21073/PIA21073~small.jpg' ],
           message: null,
           exit: false,
           pass: true,
           _stdout:
            '["PIA08653/PIA08653~small.jpg","PIA21073/PIA21073~small.jpg"]',
           _stderr: '' } } },
  step2:
   { files:
      { '/tmp/PIA08653/PIA08653~small.jpg':
         { error: null,
           result:
            "--2019-03-03 11:28:23--  https://images-assets.nasa.gov/image/PIA08653/PIA08653~small.jpg\nResolving images-assets.nasa.gov... 52.84.216.98, 52.84.216.44, 52.84.216.36, ...\nConnecting to images-assets.nasa.gov|52.84.216.98|:443... connected.\nHTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK\nLength: 21833 (21K) [image/jpeg]\nSaving to: '/tmp/PIA08653/PIA08653~small.jpg'\n\n     0K .......... .......... .                               100% 3.48M=0.006s\n\n2019-03-03 11:28:24 (3.48 MB/s) - '/tmp/PIA08653/PIA08653~small.jpg' saved [21833/21833]\n\n",
           message: null,
           exit: false,
           pass: true,
           _stdout:
            "--2019-03-03 11:28:23--  https://images-assets.nasa.gov/image/PIA08653/PIA08653~small.jpg\nResolving images-assets.nasa.gov... 52.84.216.98, 52.84.216.44, 52.84.216.36, ...\nConnecting to images-assets.nasa.gov|52.84.216.98|:443... connected.\nHTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK\nLength: 21833 (21K) [image/jpeg]\nSaving to: '/tmp/PIA08653/PIA08653~small.jpg'\n\n     0K .......... .......... .                               100% 3.48M=0.006s\n\n2019-03-03 11:28:24 (3.48 MB/s) - '/tmp/PIA08653/PIA08653~small.jpg' saved [21833/21833]\n\n",
           _stderr: '' },
        '/tmp/PIA21073/PIA21073~small.jpg':
         { error: null,
           result:
            "(...)",
           message: null,
           exit: false,
           pass: true,
           _stdout:
            "(...)",
           _stderr: '' } } } }

Developing Mods

A separate documention is provided to develop new mods. It can be found here.

License

MIT

Publishing

To publish next version of etl-js, run the following:

npm version patch
git push --tags origin master
npm run dist
npm publish --access public

FOSSA Status