How to use multi-thread consumer in kafka 0.9.0?

Question

The doc of kafka give an approach about with following describes:

One Consumer Per Thread:A simple option is to give each thread its own consumer > instance.

My code:

public class KafkaConsumerRunner implements Runnable {

    private final AtomicBoolean closed = new AtomicBoolean(false);
    private final CloudKafkaConsumer consumer;
    private final String topicName;

    public KafkaConsumerRunner(CloudKafkaConsumer consumer, String topicName) {
        this.consumer = consumer;
        this.topicName = topicName;
    }

    @Override
    public void run() {
        try {
            this.consumer.subscribe(topicName);
            ConsumerRecords<String, String> records;
            while (!closed.get()) {
                synchronized (consumer) {
                    records = consumer.poll(100);
                }
                for (ConsumerRecord<String, String> tmp : records) {
                    System.out.println(tmp.value());
                }
            }
        } catch (WakeupException e) {
            // Ignore exception if closing
            System.out.println(e);
            //if (!closed.get()) throw e;
        }
    }

    // Shutdown hook which can be called from a separate thread
    public void shutdown() {
        closed.set(true);
        consumer.wakeup();
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        CloudKafkaConsumer kafkaConsumer = KafkaConsumerBuilder.builder()
                .withBootstrapServers("172.31.1.159:9092")
                .withGroupId("test")
                .build();
        ExecutorService executorService = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(5);
        executorService.execute(new KafkaConsumerRunner(kafkaConsumer, "log"));
        executorService.execute(new KafkaConsumerRunner(kafkaConsumer, "log.info"));
        executorService.shutdown();
    }
}

but it doesn't work and throws an exception:

java.util.ConcurrentModificationException: KafkaConsumer is not safe for multi-threaded access

Furthermore, I read the source of Flink (an open source platform for distributed stream and batch data processing). Flink using multi-thread consumer is similar to mine.

long pollTimeout = Long.parseLong(flinkKafkaConsumer.properties.getProperty(KEY_POLL_TIMEOUT, Long.toString(DEFAULT_POLL_TIMEOUT)));
pollLoop: while (running) {
    ConsumerRecords<byte[], byte[]> records;
    //noinspection SynchronizeOnNonFinalField
    synchronized (flinkKafkaConsumer.consumer) {
        try {
            records = flinkKafkaConsumer.consumer.poll(pollTimeout);
        } catch (WakeupException we) {
            if (running) {
                throw we;
            }
            // leave loop
            continue;
        }
    }

flink code of mutli-thread

What's wrong?

Answer 1

It is throwing the exception on your call to subscribe. this.consumer.subscribe(topicName);

Move that block into a synchronized block like this:

@Override
public void run() {
    try {
        synchronized (consumer) {
            this.consumer.subscribe(topicName);
        }
        ConsumerRecords<String, String> records;
        while (!closed.get()) {
            synchronized (consumer) {
                records = consumer.poll(100);
            }
            for (ConsumerRecord<String, String> tmp : records) {
                System.out.println(tmp.value());
            }
        }
    } catch (WakeupException e) {
        // Ignore exception if closing
        System.out.println(e);
        //if (!closed.get()) throw e;
    }
}

Answer 2

Kafka consumer is not thread safe. As you pointed out in your question, the document stated that

A simple option is to give each thread its own consumer instance

But in your code, you have the same consumer instance wrapped by different KafkaConsumerRunner instances. Thus multiple threads are accessing the same consumer instance. The kafka documentation clearly stated

The Kafka consumer is NOT thread-safe. All network I/O happens in the thread of the application making the call. It is the responsibility of the user to ensure that multi-threaded access is properly synchronized. Un-synchronized access will result in ConcurrentModificationException.

That's exactly the exception you received.

Answer 3

Maybe is not your case, but if you are mergin processing of data of serveral topics, then you can read data from multiple topics with the same consumer. If not, then is preferable to create separate jobs consuming each topic.