Generating Timestamps / Watermarks

Assigning Timestamps
- Source Functions with Timestamps and Watermarks
- Timestamp Assigners / Watermark Generators

This section is relevant for program running on Event Time. For an introduction to Event Time, Processing Time, and Ingestion Time, please refer to the event time introduction

To work with Event Time, streaming programs need to set the time characteristic accordingly.

final StreamExecutionEnvironment env = StreamExecutionEnvironment.getExecutionEnvironment();
env.setStreamTimeCharacteristic(TimeCharacteristic.EventTime);

val env = StreamExecutionEnvironment.getExecutionEnvironment
env.setStreamTimeCharacteristic(TimeCharacteristic.EventTime)

Assigning Timestamps

In order to work with Event Time, Flink needs to know the events’ timestamps, meaning each element in the stream needs to get its event timestamp assigned. That happens usually by accessing/extracting the timestamp from some field in the element.

Timestamp assignment goes hand-in-hand with generating watermarks, which tell the system about the progress in event time.

There are two ways to assign timestamps and generate Watermarks:

Directly in the data stream source
Via a timestamp assigner / watermark generator: in Flink timestamp assigners also define the watermarks to be emitted

Attention Both timestamps and watermarks are specified as millliseconds since the Java epoch of 1970-01-01T00:00:00Z.

Source Functions with Timestamps and Watermarks

Stream sources can also directly assign timestamps to the elements they produce and emit Watermarks. In that case, no Timestamp Assigner is needed.

To assign a timestamp to an element in the source directly, the source must use the collectWithTimestamp(...) method on the SourceContext. To generate Watermarks, the source must call the emitWatermark(Watermark) function.

Below is a simple example of a source (non-checkpointed) that assigns timestamps and generates Watermarks depending on special events:

@Override
public void run(SourceContext<MyType> ctx) throws Exception {
	while (/* condition */) {
		MyType next = getNext();
		ctx.collectWithTimestamp(next, next.getEventTimestamp());

		if (next.hasWatermarkTime()) {
			ctx.emitWatermark(new Watermark(next.getWatermarkTime()));
		}
	}
}

override def run(ctx: SourceContext[MyType]): Unit = {
	while (/* condition */) {
		val next: MyType = getNext()
		ctx.collectWithTimestamp(next, next.eventTimestamp)

		if (next.hasWatermarkTime) {
			ctx.emitWatermark(new Watermark(next.getWatermarkTime))
		}
	}
}

Note: If the streaming program uses a TimestampAssigner on a stream where elements have a timestamp already, those timestamps will be overwritten by the TimestampAssigner. Similarly, Watermarks will be overwritten as well.

Timestamp Assigners / Watermark Generators

Timestamp Assigners take a stream and produce a new stream with timestamped elements and watermarks. If the original stream had timestamps and/or watermarks already, the timestamp assigner overwrites them.

The timestamp assigners usually are specified immediately after the data source but it is not strictly required to do so. A common pattern is, for example, to parse (MapFunction) and filter (FilterFunction) before the timestamp assigner. In any case, the timestamp assigner needs to be specified before the first operation on event time (such as the first window operation). As a special case, when using Kafka as the source of a streaming job, Flink allows the specification of a timestamp assigner / watermark emitter inside the source (or consumer) itself. More information on how to do so can be found in the Kafka Connector documentation.

NOTE: The remainder of this section presents the main interfaces a programmer has to implement in order to create her own timestamp extractors/watermark emitters. To see the pre-implemented extractors that ship with Flink, please refer to the Pre-defined Timestamp Extractors / Watermark Emitters page.

final StreamExecutionEnvironment env = StreamExecutionEnvironment.getExecutionEnvironment();
env.setStreamTimeCharacteristic(TimeCharacteristic.EventTime);

DataStream<MyEvent> stream = env.readFile(
        myFormat, myFilePath, FileProcessingMode.PROCESS_CONTINUOUSLY, 100,
        FilePathFilter.createDefaultFilter(), typeInfo);

DataStream<MyEvent> withTimestampsAndWatermarks = stream
        .filter( event -> event.severity() == WARNING )
        .assignTimestampsAndWatermarks(new MyTimestampsAndWatermarks());

withTimestampsAndWatermarks
        .keyBy( (event) -> event.getGroup() )
        .timeWindow(Time.seconds(10))
        .reduce( (a, b) -> a.add(b) )
        .addSink(...);

val env = StreamExecutionEnvironment.getExecutionEnvironment
env.setStreamTimeCharacteristic(TimeCharacteristic.EventTime)

val stream: DataStream[MyEvent] = env.readFile(
         myFormat, myFilePath, FileProcessingMode.PROCESS_CONTINUOUSLY, 100,
         FilePathFilter.createDefaultFilter());

val withTimestampsAndWatermarks: DataStream[MyEvent] = stream
        .filter( _.severity == WARNING )
        .assignTimestampsAndWatermarks(new MyTimestampsAndWatermarks())

withTimestampsAndWatermarks
        .keyBy( _.getGroup )
        .timeWindow(Time.seconds(10))
        .reduce( (a, b) => a.add(b) )
        .addSink(...)

With Periodic Watermarks

The AssignerWithPeriodicWatermarks assigns timestamps and generates watermarks periodically (possibly depending on the stream elements, or purely based on processing time).

The interval (every n milliseconds) in which the watermark will be generated is defined via ExecutionConfig.setAutoWatermarkInterval(...). Each time, the assigner’s getCurrentWatermark() method will be called, and a new Watermark will be emitted, if the returned Watermark is non-null and larger than the previous Watermark.

Two simple examples of timestamp assigners with periodic watermark generation are below.

/**
 * This generator generates watermarks assuming that elements come out of order to a certain degree only.
 * The latest elements for a certain timestamp t will arrive at most n milliseconds after the earliest
 * elements for timestamp t.
 */
public class BoundedOutOfOrdernessGenerator extends AssignerWithPeriodicWatermarks<MyEvent> {

    private final long maxOutOfOrderness = 3500; // 3.5 seconds

    private long currentMaxTimestamp;

    @Override
    public long extractTimestamp(MyEvent element, long previousElementTimestamp) {
        long timestamp = element.getCreationTime();
        currentMaxTimestamp = Math.max(timestamp, currentMaxTimestamp);
        return timestamp;
    }

    @Override
    public Watermark getCurrentWatermark() {
        // return the watermark as current highest timestamp minus the out-of-orderness bound
        return new Watermark(currentMaxTimestamp - maxOutOfOrderness);
    }
}

/**
 * This generator generates watermarks that are lagging behind processing time by a certain amount.
 * It assumes that elements arrive in Flink after at most a certain time.
 */
public class TimeLagWatermarkGenerator extends AssignerWithPeriodicWatermarks<MyEvent> {

	private final long maxTimeLag = 5000; // 5 seconds

	@Override
	public long extractTimestamp(MyEvent element, long previousElementTimestamp) {
		return element.getCreationTime();
	}

	@Override
	public Watermark getCurrentWatermark() {
		// return the watermark as current time minus the maximum time lag
		return new Watermark(System.currentTimeMillis() - maxTimeLag);
	}
}

/**
 * This generator generates watermarks assuming that elements come out of order to a certain degree only.
 * The latest elements for a certain timestamp t will arrive at most n milliseconds after the earliest
 * elements for timestamp t.
 */
class BoundedOutOfOrdernessGenerator extends AssignerWithPeriodicWatermarks[MyEvent] {

    val maxOutOfOrderness = 3500L; // 3.5 seconds

    var currentMaxTimestamp: Long;

    override def extractTimestamp(element: MyEvent, previousElementTimestamp: Long): Long = {
        val timestamp = element.getCreationTime()
        currentMaxTimestamp = max(timestamp, currentMaxTimestamp)
        timestamp;
    }

    override def getCurrentWatermark(): Watermark = {
        // return the watermark as current highest timestamp minus the out-of-orderness bound
        new Watermark(currentMaxTimestamp - maxOutOfOrderness);
    }
}

/**
 * This generator generates watermarks that are lagging behind processing time by a certain amount.
 * It assumes that elements arrive in Flink after at most a certain time.
 */
class TimeLagWatermarkGenerator extends AssignerWithPeriodicWatermarks[MyEvent] {

    val maxTimeLag = 5000L; // 5 seconds

    override def extractTimestamp(element: MyEvent, previousElementTimestamp: Long): Long = {
        element.getCreationTime
    }

    override def getCurrentWatermark(): Watermark = {
        // return the watermark as current time minus the maximum time lag
        new Watermark(System.currentTimeMillis() - maxTimeLag)
    }
}

With Punctuated Watermarks

To generate Watermarks whenever a certain event indicates that a new watermark can be generated, use the AssignerWithPunctuatedWatermarks. For this class, Flink will first call the extractTimestamp(...) method to assign the element a timestamp, and then immediately call for that element the checkAndGetNextWatermark(...) method.

The checkAndGetNextWatermark(...) method gets the timestamp that was assigned in the extractTimestamp(...) method, and can decide whether it wants to generate a Watermark. Whenever the checkAndGetNextWatermark(...) method returns a non-null Watermark, and that Watermark is larger than the latest previous Watermark, that new Watermark will be emitted.

public class PunctuatedAssigner extends AssignerWithPunctuatedWatermarks<MyEvent> {

	@Override
	public long extractTimestamp(MyEvent element, long previousElementTimestamp) {
		return element.getCreationTime();
	}

	@Override
	public Watermark checkAndGetNextWatermark(MyEvent lastElement, long extractedTimestamp) {
		return element.hasWatermarkMarker() ? new Watermark(extractedTimestamp) : null;
	}
}

class PunctuatedAssigner extends AssignerWithPunctuatedWatermarks[MyEvent] {

	override def extractTimestamp(element: MyEvent, previousElementTimestamp: Long): Long = {
		element.getCreationTime
	}

	override def checkAndGetNextWatermark(lastElement: MyEvent, extractedTimestamp: Long): Watermark = {
		if (element.hasWatermarkMarker()) new Watermark(extractedTimestamp) else null
	}
}

Note: It is possible to generate a watermark on every single event. However, because each watermark causes some computation downstream, an excessive number of watermarks slows down performance.