How to setup a HTTP Source for testing Flume setup?

Question

I am a newbie to Flume and Hadoop. We are developing a BI module where we can store all the logs from different servers in HDFS.

For this I am using Flume. I just started trying it out. Succesfully created a node but now I am willing to setup a HTTP source and a sink that will write incoming requests over HTTP to local file.

Any suggesstions?

Thanks in Advance/

Answer 1

Hopefully this helps you get started. I'm having some problems testing this on my machine and don't have time to fully troubleshoot it right now, but I'll get to that...

Assuming you have Flume up and running right now, this should be what your flume.conf file needs to look like to use an HTTP POST source and local file sink (note: this goes to a local file, not HDFS)

########## NEW AGENT ########## 
# flume-ng agent -f /etc/flume/conf/flume.httptest.conf -n httpagent
# 

# slagent = SysLogAgent
###############################
httpagent.sources = http-source
httpagent.sinks = local-file-sink
httpagent.channels = ch3

# Define / Configure Source (multiport seems to support newer "stuff")
###############################
httpagent.sources.http-source.type = org.apache.flume.source.http.HTTPSource
httpagent.sources.http-source.channels = ch3
httpagent.sources.http-source.port = 81


# Local File Sink
###############################
httpagent.sinks.local-file-sink.type = file_roll
httpagent.sinks.local-file-sink.channel = ch3
httpagent.sinks.local-file-sink.sink.directory = /root/Desktop/http_test
httpagent.sinks.local-file-sink.rollInterval = 5

# Channels
###############################
httpagent.channels.ch3.type = memory
httpagent.channels.ch3.capacity = 1000

Start Flume with the command on the second line. Tweak it for your needs (port, sink.directory, and rollInterval especially). This is a pretty bare minimum config file, there are more options availible, check out the Flume User Guide. Now, as far as this goes, the agent starts and runs fine for me....

Here's what I don't have time to test. The HTTP agent, by default, accepts data in JSON format. You -should- be able to test this agent by sending a cURL request with a form something like this:

curl -X POST -H 'Content-Type: application/json; charset=UTF-8' -d '{"username":"xyz","password":"123"}' http://yourdomain.com:81/

-X sets the request to POST, -H sends headers, -d sends data (valid json), and then the host:port. The problem for me is that I get an error:

WARN http.HTTPSource: Received bad request from client. org.apache.flume.source.http.HTTPBadRequestException: Request has invalid JSON Syntax.

in my Flume client, invalid JSON? So something is being sent wrong. The fact that an error is popping up though shows the Flume source is receiving data. Whatever you have that's POSTing should work as long as it's in a valid format.