#client library

Brace yourself, this is a long one.

The following guide was originally intended for client library developers to describe in detail all the important features and functionality we expected in an NSQ client library.

While writing it we began to realize that it had value beyond client library developers. It incorporates a comprehensive analysis of most of the capabilities of NSQ (both client and server) and is therefore interesting and useful for end-users as well (or anyone using or interested in infrastructure messaging platforms).

If you need some background on NSQ please see our original blog post or its follow up, spray some NSQ on it.

Intro

NSQ's design pushes a lot of responsibility onto client libraries in order to maintain overall cluster robustness and performance.

This guide attempts to outline the various responsibilities well-behaved client libraries need to fulfill. Because publishing to nsqd is trivial (just an HTTP POST to the /put endpoint), this document focuses on consumers.

By setting these expectations we hope to provide a foundation for achieving consistency across languages for NSQ users.

Overview

Configuration

Discovery (optional)

Connection Handling

Feature Negotiation

Data Flow / Heartbeats

Message Handling

RDY State

Backoff

Configuration

At a high level, our philosophy with respect to configuration is to design the system to have the flexibility to support different workloads, use sane defaults that run well "out of the box", and minimize the number of dials.

A client subscribes to a topic on a channel over a TCP connection to nsqd instance(s). You can only subscribe to one topic per connection so multiple topic consumption needs to be structured accordingly.

Using nsqlookupd for discovery is optional so client libraries should support a configuration where a client connects directly to one or more nsqd instances or where it is configured to poll one or more nsqlookupd instances. When a client is configured to poll nsqlookupd the polling interval should be configurable. Additionally, because typical deployments of NSQ are in distributed environments with many producers and consumers, the client library should automatically add jitter based on a random % of the configured value. This will help avoid a thundering herd of connections. For more detail see Discovery.

An important performance knob for clients is the number of messages it can receive before nsqd expects a response. This pipelining facilitates buffered, batched, and asynchronous message handling. By convention this value is called max_in_flight and it effects how RDY state is managed. For more detail see RDY State.

Being a system that is designed to gracefully handle failure, client libraries are expected to implement retry handling for failed messages and provide options for bounding that behavior in terms of number of attempts per message. For more detail see Message Handling.

Relatedly, when message processing fails, the client library is expected to automatically handle re-queueing the message. NSQ supports sending a delay along with the REQ command. Client libraries are expected to provide options for what this delay should be set to initially (for the first failure) and how it should change for subsequent failures. For more detail see Backoff.

Most importantly, the client library should support some method of configuring callback handlers for message processing. The signature of these callbacks should be simple, typically accepting a single parameter (an instance of a "message object").

Discovery

An important component of NSQ is nsqlookupd, which provides a discovery service for consumers to locate producers of a given topic at runtime.

Although optional, using nsqlookupd greatly reduces the amount of configuration required to maintain and scale a large distributed NSQ cluster.

When a client uses nsqlookupd for discovery, the client library should manage the process of polling all nsqlookupd instances for an up-to-date set of nsqd producers and should manage the connections to those producers.

Querying an nsqlookupd instance is straightforward. Perform an HTTP request to the lookup endpoint with a query parameter of the topic the client is attempting to discover (i.e. /lookup?topic=clicks). The response format is JSON:

Example JSON Response From nsqlookupd

The broadcast_address and tcp_port should be used to connect to an nsqd producer. Because, by design, nsqlookupd instances don't coordinate their lists of producers, the client library should union the lists it received from all nsqlookupd queries to build the final list of nsqd producers to connect to. The broadcast_address:tcp_port combination should be used as the unique key for this union.

A periodic timer should be used to repeatedly poll the configured nsqlookupd so that clients will automatically discover new producers. The client library should automatically initiate connections to all newly found nsqd producers.

When client library execution begins it should bootstrap this polling process by kicking off an initial set of requests to the configured nsqlookupd instances.

Connection Handling

Once a client has an nsqd producer to connect to (via discovery or manual configuration), it should open a TCP connection to broadcast_address:port. A separate TCP connection should be made to each nsqd for each topic the client wants to consume.

When connecting to an nsqd instance, the client library should send the following data, in order:

the magic identifier

an IDENTIFY command (and payload) and read/verify response

a SUB command (specifying desired topic) and read/verify response

an initial RDY count of 1 (see RDY State).

(low-level details on the protocol are available in the spec)

Reconnection

Client libraries should automatically handle reconnection as follows:

If the client is configured with a specific list of nsqd instances, reconnection should be handled by delaying the retry attempt in an exponential backoff manner (i.e. try to reconnect in 8s, 16s, 32s, etc., up to a max).

If the client is configured to discover instances via nsqlookupd, reconnection should be handled automatically based on the polling interval (i.e. if a client disconnects from an nsqd, the client library should only attempt to reconnect if that instance is discovered by a subsequent nsqlookupd polling round). This ensures that clients can learn about producers that are introduced to the topology and ones that are removed (or failed).

Feature Negotiation

The IDENTIFY command can be used to set nsqd side metadata, modify client settings, and negotiate features. It satisfies two needs:

In certain cases a client would like to modify how nsqd interacts with it (currently this is limited to modifying a client's heartbeat interval but you can imagine this could evolve to include enabling compression, TLS, output buffering, etc.)

nsqd responds to the IDENTIFY command with a JSON payload that includes important server side configuration values that the client should respect while interacting with the instance.

After connecting, based on the user's configuration, a client library should send an IDENTIFY command (the body of an IDENTIFY command is a JSON payload), e.g:

Example IDENTIFY Command JSON Payload

The feature_negotiation field indicates that the client can accept a JSON payload in return. The short_id and long_id are arbitrary text fields that are used by nsqd (and nsqadmin) to identify clients. heartbeat_interval configures the interval between heartbeats on a per-client basis.

The nsqd will respond OK if it does not support feature negotiation (introduced in nsqd v0.2.20+), otherwise:

Example IDENTIFY Response JSON Payload

More detail on the use of the max_rdy_count field is in the RDY State section.

Data Flow and Heartbeats

Once a client is in a subscribed state, data flow in the NSQ protocol is asynchronous. For consumers, this means that in order to build truly robust and performant client libraries they should be structured using asynchronous network IO loops and/or "threads" (the scare quotes are used to represent both OS-level threads and userland threads, like coroutines).

Additionally clients are expected to respond to periodic heartbeats from the nsqd instances they're connected to. By default this happens at 30 second intervals. The client can respond with any command but, by convention, it's easiest to simply respond with a NOP whenever a heartbeat is received. See the protocol spec for specifics on how to identify heartbeats.

A "thread" should be dedicated to reading data off the TCP socket, unpacking the data from the frame, and performing the multiplexing logic to route the data as appropriate. This is also conveniently the best spot to handle heartbeats. At the lowest level, reading the protocol involves the following sequential steps:

read 4 byte big endian uint32 size

read size bytes data

unpack data

...

profit

goto 1

A Brief Interlude on Errors

Due to their asynchronous nature, it would take a bit of extra state tracking in order to correlate protocol errors with the commands that generated them. Instead, we took the "fail fast" approach so the overwhelming majority of protocol-level error handling is fatal. This means that if the client sends an invalid command (or gets itself into an invalid state) the nsqd instance it's connected to will protect itself (and the system) by forcibly closing the connection (and, if possible, sending an error to the client). This, coupled with the connection handling mentioned above, makes for a more robust and stable system.

The only errors that are not fatal are:

E_FIN_FAILED - The client tried to send a FIN command for an invalid message ID.

E_REQ_FAILED - The client tried to send a REQ command for an invalid message ID.

E_TOUCH_FAILED - The client tried to send a TOUCH command for an invalid message ID.

Because these errors are most often timing issues, they are not considered fatal. These situations typically occur when a message times out on the nsqd side and is re-queued and delivered to another client. The original recipient is no longer allowed to respond on behalf of that message.

Message Handling

When the IO loop unpacks a data frame containing a message, it should route that message to the configured handler for processing.

The nsqd producer expects to receive a reply within its configured message timeout (default: 60 seconds). There are a few possible scenarios:

The handler indicates that the message was processed successfully.

The handler indicates that the message processing was unsuccessful.

The handler decides that it needs more time to process the message.

The in-flight timeout expires and nsqd automatically re-queues the message.

In the first 3 cases, the client library should send the appropriate command on the client's behalf (FIN, REQ, and TOUCH respectively).

The FIN command is the simplest of the bunch. It tells nsqd that it can safely discard the message. FIN can also be used to discard a message that you do not want to process or retry.

The REQ command tells nsqd that the message should be re-queued (with an optional parameter specifying the amount of time to defer additional attempts). If the optional parameter is not specified by the client, the client library should automatically calculate the duration in relation to the number of attempts to process the message (a multiple is typically sufficient). The client library should discard messages that exceed the configured max attempts. When this occurs, a user-supplied callback should be executed to notify and enable special handling.

If the message handler requires more time than the configured message timeout, the TOUCH command can be used to reset the timer on the nsqd side. This can be done repeatedly until the message is either FIN or REQ, up to the nsqd producer's configured max timeout. Client libraries should never automatically TOUCH on behalf of the client.

If the nsqd instance receives no response, the message will time out and be automatically re-queued for delivery to an available client.

Finally, a property of each message is the number of attempts. Client libraries should compare this value against the configured max and discard messages that have exceeded it. When a message is discarded there should be a callback fired. Typical default implementations of this callback might include writing to a directory on disk, logging, etc. The user should be able to override the default handling.

RDY State

Because messages are pushed from nsqd to clients we needed a way to manage the flow of data in userland rather than relying on low-level TCP semantics. A client's RDY state is NSQ's flow control mechanism.

As outlined in the configuration section, a consumer is configured with a max_in_flight. This is a concurrency and performance knob, e.g. some downstream systems are able to more-easily batch process messages and benefit greatly from a higher max-in-flight.

When a client connects to nsqd (and subscribes) it is placed in an initial RDY state of 0. No messages will be sent to the client.

Client libraries have a few responsibilities:

bootstrap and evenly distribute the configured max_in_flight to all connections.

never allow the aggregate sum of RDY counts for all connections (total_rdy_count) to exceed the configured max_in_flight.

never exceed the per connection nsqd configured max_rdy_count.

expose an API method to reliably indicate message flow starvation

1. Bootstrap and Distribution

There are a few considerations when choosing an appropriate RDY count for a connection (in order to evenly distribute max_in_flight):

the # of connections is dynamic, often times not even known in advance (ie. when discovering producers via nsqlookupd).

max_in_flight may be lower than your number of connections

To kickstart message flow a client library needs to send an initial RDY count. Because the eventual number of connections is often not known ahead of time it should start with a value of 1 so that the client library does not unfairly favor the first connection(s).

Additionally, after each message is processed, the client library should evaluate whether or not it's time to update RDY state. An update should be triggered if the current value is 0 or if it is below ~25% of the last value sent.

The client library should always attempt to evenly distribute RDY count across all connections. Typically, this is implemented as max_in_flight / num_conns.

However, when max_in_flight < num_conns this simple formula isn't sufficient. In this state, client libraries should perform a dynamic runtime evaluation of producer "liveness" by measuring the duration of time since it last received a message for a connection. After a configurable expiration, it should re-distribute whatever RDY count is available to a new (random) set of producers. By doing this, you guarantee that you'll (eventually) find producers with messages. Clearly this has a latency impact.

2. Maintaining max_in_flight

The client library should maintain a ceiling for the maximum number of messages in flight for a given consumer. Specifically, the aggregate sum of each connection's RDY count should never exceed the configured max_in_flight.

Below is example code in Python to determine whether or not the proposed RDY count is valid for a given connection:

send_ready.py

3. Producer Max RDY Count

Each nsqd is configurable with a --max-rdy-count (see feature negotiation for more information on the handshake a client can perform to ascertain this value). If the client sends a RDY count that is outside of the acceptable range its connection will be forcefully closed. For backwards compatibility, this value should be assumed to be 2500 if the nsqd instance does not support feature negotiation.

4. Message Flow Starvation

Finally, the client library should provide an API method to indicate message flow starvation. It is insufficient for clients (in their message handlers) to simply compare the number of messages they have in-flight vs. their configured max_in_flight in order to decide to "process a batch". There are two cases when this is problematic:

When clients configure max_in_flight > 1, due to variable num_conns, there are cases where max_in_flight is not evenly divisible by num_conns. Because the contract states that you should never exceed max_in_flight, you must round down, and you end up with cases where the sum of all RDY counts is less than max_in_flight.

Consider the case where only a subset of producers have messages. Because of the expected even distribution of RDY count, those active producers only have a fraction of the configured max_in_flight.

In both cases, a client will never actually receive max_in_flight # of messages. Therefore, the client library should expose a method is_starved that will evaluate whether any of the connections are starved, as follows:

is_starved.py

The is_starved method should be used by message handlers to reliably identify when to process a batch of messages.

Backoff

The question of what to do when message processing fails is a complicated one to answer. The message handling section detailed client library behavior that would defer the processing of failed messages for some (increasing) duration of time. The other piece of the puzzle is whether or not to reduce throughput. The interplay between these two pieces of functionality is crucial for overall system stability.

By slowing down the rate of processing, or "backing off", the consumer allows the downstream system to recover from transient failure. However, this behavior should be configurable as it isn't always desirable, such as situations where latency is prioritized.

Backoff should be implemented by sending RDY 0 to the appropriate producers, stopping message flow. The duration of time to remain in this state should be calculated based on the number of repeated failures (exponential). Similarly, successful processing should reduce this duration until the reader is no longer in a backoff state.

While a reader is in a backoff state, after the timeout expires, the client library should only ever send RDY 1 regardless of max_in_flight. This effectively "tests the waters" before returning to full throttle. Additionally, during a backoff timeout, the client library should ignore any success or failure results with respect to calculating backoff duration (i.e. it should only take into account one result per backoff timeout).

Bringing It All Together

Distributed systems are fun.

The interactions between the various components of an NSQ cluster work in concert to provide a platform on which to build robust, performant, and stable infrastructure. We hope this guide shed some light as to how important the client's role is.

In terms of actually implementing all of this, we treat pynsq and go-nsq as our reference codebases. The structure of pynsq can be broken down into three core components:

Message - a high-level message object, which exposes stateful methods for responding to the nsqd producer (FIN, REQ, TOUCH, etc.) as well as metadata such as attempts and timestamp.

Connection - a high-level wrapper around a TCP connection to a specific nsqd producer, which has knowledge of in flight messages, its RDY state, negotiated features, and various timings.

Reader - the front-facing API a user interacts with, which handles discovery, creates connections (and subscribes), bootstraps and manages RDY state, parses raw incoming data, creates Message objects, and dispatches messages to handlers.

We're happy to help support anyone interested in building client libraries for NSQ. We're looking for contributors to continue to expand our language support as well as flesh out functionality in existing libraries. The community has already open sourced client libraries for 7 languages:

go-nsq Go (official)

pynsq Python (official)

libnsq C

nsq-java Java

TrendrrNSQClient Java

nsqjava Java

nsq-client Node.js

nodensq Node.js

nsqphp PHP

ruby_nsq Ruby

If you're interested in hacking on NSQ, check out the GitHub repo. We also publish binary distributions for Linux and Darwin to make it easy to get started.

If you have any specific questions, feel free to ping me on twitter @imsnakes.

Finally, a huge thank you to the crew at bitly. @mccutchen and @ploxiln for their tireless review and @jehiah my partner in crime on NSQ.