Get Started with Redpanda Connect using rpk

This guide explains how to get started with Redpanda Connect using rpk, the Redpanda command-line interface (CLI). You can also install and run rpk in FIPS compliance mode.

Install

The rpk CLI allows you to create and manage data pipelines with Redpanda Connect as well as interact with Redpanda clusters.

The rpk CLI also includes an rpk connect plugin, which manages installations and upgrades of Redpanda Connect. This plugin is automatically installed when you first run rpk connect commands, unless you run rpk connect --version, which prompts you to install the plugin.
Also interacting with a Redpanda cluster?

If you want to use rpk to also communicate with a Redpanda cluster, ensure the version of rpk that you install matches the version of Redpanda running in your cluster.

Linux

To install, or update to, the latest version of rpk for Linux, run:

curl -LO https://github.com/redpanda-data/redpanda/releases/latest/download/rpk-linux-amd64.zip &&
  mkdir -p ~/.local/bin &&
  export PATH="~/.local/bin:$PATH" &&
  unzip rpk-linux-amd64.zip -d ~/.local/bin/
bash
You can use rpk on Windows only with WSL. However, commands that require Redpanda to be installed on your machine are not supported, such as rpk container commands, rpk iotune, and rpk redpanda commands.

To install, or update to, a version other than the latest, run:

curl -LO https://github.com/redpanda-data/redpanda/releases/download/v<version>/rpk-linux-amd64.zip &&
  mkdir -p ~/.local/bin &&
  export PATH="~/.local/bin:$PATH" &&
  unzip rpk-linux-amd64.zip -d ~/.local/bin/
bash

FIPS compliance

This feature requires an enterprise license. You can either upgrade to an Enterprise Edition license, or generate a trial license key that’s valid for 30 days.

To install rpk to run the latest version of Redpanda Connect in FIPS-compliant mode, you must install the redpanda-rpk-fips and redpanda-connect-fips packages. Both packages are built using the Microsoft GoLang compiler and the Microsoft’s Go Crypto OpenSSL package, which uses the FIPS-approved version of OpenSSL.

The packages for FIPS-compliant rpk (redpanda-rpk-fips) and Redpanda rpk (redpanda-rpk) are mutually exclusive, and so cannot be installed in the same environment.

  1. To make sure your distribution is up to date, run:

    sudo dnf upgrade
    bash

  2. Add redpanda to your dnf list of repositories.

    curl -1sLf 'https://dl.redpanda.com/nzc4ZYQK3WRGd9sy/redpanda/cfg/setup/bash.rpm.sh' | \
sudo -E bash
    bash

  3. Install Redpanda packages for FIPS compliance.

    sudo dnf install -y redpanda-rpk-fips redpanda-connect-fips
    bash

  4. Verify your installation.

    rpk connect --version
    bash

To keep up-to-date with Redpanda Connect releases, run the following command:

sudo dnf update
bash

MacOS

  1. If you don’t have Homebrew installed, install it.

  2. To install or update rpk, run:

    brew install redpanda-data/tap/redpanda
    bash

Docker

To use rpk in Docker, you can use the Redpanda Docker image, which includes both Redpanda and rpk as part of the installation.

docker pull docker.redpanda.com/redpandadata/connect
bash

Run a pipeline

A Redpanda Connect stream pipeline is configured with a single config file, you can generate a fresh one with:

rpk connect create > connect.yaml
bash
This command may take a few seconds to run. If this is the first rpk connect command you have run, the rpk connect plugin is automatically installed.

For Docker installations:

docker run --rm docker.redpanda.com/redpandadata/connect create > ./connect.yaml
bash

The main sections that make up a config are input, pipeline and output. When you generate a fresh config it’ll simply pipe stdin to stdout like this:

input:
  stdin: {}

pipeline:
  processors: []

output:
  stdout: {}
yaml

Eventually we’ll want to configure a more useful input and output, but for now this is useful for quickly testing processors. You can execute this config with:

rpk connect run connect.yaml
bash

For Docker installations:

docker run --rm -it -v $(pwd)/connect.yaml:/connect.yaml docker.redpanda.com/redpandadata/connect run
bash

Anything you write to stdin will get written unchanged to stdout, cool! Resist the temptation to play with this for hours, there’s more stuff to try out.

Next, let’s add some processing steps in order to mutate messages. The most powerful one is the mapping processor which allows us to perform mappings, let’s add a mapping to uppercase our messages:

input:
  stdin: {}

pipeline:
  processors:
    - mapping: root = content().uppercase()

output:
  stdout: {}
yaml

Now your messages should come out in all caps.

You can add as many processing steps as you like, and since processors are what make Redpanda Connect powerful they are worth experimenting with. Let’s create a more advanced pipeline that works with JSON documents:

input:
  stdin: {}

pipeline:
  processors:
    - sleep:
        duration: 500ms
    - mapping: |
        root.doc = this
        root.first_name = this.names.index(0).uppercase()
        root.last_name = this.names.index(-1).hash("sha256").encode("base64")

output:
  stdout: {}
yaml

First, we sleep for 500 milliseconds just to keep the suspense going. Next, we restructure our input JSON document by nesting it within a field doc, we map the upper-cased first element of names to a new field first_name. Finally, we map the hashed and base64 encoded value of the last element of names to a new field last_name.

Try running that config with some sample documents:

echo '{"id":"1","names":["celine","dion"]}
{"id":"2","names":["chad","robert","kroeger"]}' | rpk connect run connect.yaml
bash

For Docker installations:

echo '{"id":"1","names":["celine","dion"]}
{"id":"2","names":["chad","robert","kroeger"]}' | docker run --rm -i -v $(pwd)/connect.yaml:/connect.yaml docker.redpanda.com/redpandadata/connect run
bash

You should see this output in the logs:

{"doc":{"id":"1","names":["celine","dion"]},"first_name":"CELINE","last_name":"1VvPgCW9sityz5XAMGdI2BTA7/44Wb3cANKxqhiCo50="}
{"doc":{"id":"2","names":["chad","robert","kroeger"]},"first_name":"CHAD","last_name":"uXXg5wCKPjpyj/qbivPbD9H9CZ5DH/F0Q1Twytnt2hQ="}
json

See also: