15.4 Install and configure Kafka Connect and the Adobe Experience Platform Sink Connector

Install and configure Kafka Connect and the Adobe Experience Platform Sink Connector

15.4.1 Download the Adobe Experience Platform Sink Connector

Go to https://github.com/adobe/experience-platform-streaming-connect/releases and download the latest official release of the Adobe Experience Platform Sink Connector.

Kafka

Place the download file, streaming-connect-sink-0.0.14-java-11.jar, onto your desktop.

Kafka

15.4.2 Configure Kafka Connect

Go to the folder on your desktop named Kafka_AEP and navigate to the folder kafka_2.13-3.1.0/config. In that folder, open the file connect-distributed.properties using any Text Editor.

Kafka

In your Text Editor, go to line 34 and 35 and make sure to set the fields key.converter.schemas.enable and value.converter.schemas.enable to false

key.converter.schemas.enable=false
value.converter.schemas.enable=false

Save your changes to this file.

Kafka

Next, go back to the folder kafka_2.13-3.1.0 and manually create a new folder, and name it connectors.

Kafka

Right-click the folder and click New terminal at Folder.

Kafka

You'll then see this. Enter the command pwd to retrieve the full path for that folder. Select the full path and copy it to your clipboard.

Kafka

Go back to your Text Editor, to the file connect-distributed.properties and scroll down to the last line (line 86 in the screenshot). You should uncomment the line that starts with # plugin.path= and you should paste the full path to the folder named connectors. The result should look similar to this:

plugin.path=/Users/woutervangeluwe/Desktop/Kafka_AEP/kafka_2.13-3.1.0/connectors

Save your changes to the file connect-distributed.properties and close your Text Editor.

Kafka

Next, copy the latest official release of the Adobe Experience Platform Sink Connector that you downloaded into the folder named connectors. The file that you downloaded before is named streaming-connect-sink-0.0.14-java-11.jar, you can simply move it into the connectors folder.

Kafka

Next, open a new Terminal window at the level of the kafka_2.13-3.1.0 folder. Right-click that folder and click New Terminal at Folder.

In the Terminal window, paste this command: bin/connect-distributed.sh config/connect-distributed.properties and click Enter. This command will start Kafka Connect and will load the library of the Adobe Experience Platform Sink Connector.

Kafka

After a couple of seconds, you'll see something like this:

Kafka

15.4.3 Create your Adobe Experience Platform Sink Connector using Postman

You can now interact with Kafka Connect using Postman. To do so, download this Postman Collection and uncompress it to your local computer on the desktop. You'll then have a file that is called Kafka_AEP.postman_collection.json.

Kafka

You need to import this file in Postman. To do so, open Postman, click Import, drag and drop the file Kafka_AEP.postman_collection.json into the popup and click Import.

Kafka

You'll then find this collection in the left menu of Postman. Click the first request, GET Available Kafka Connect connectors to open it.

Kafka

You'll then see this. Click the blue Send button, after which you should see an empty response []. The empty response is due to the fact that no Kafka Connect connectors are currently defined.

Kafka

To create a connector, click to open the second request in the Kafka collection, POST Create AEP Sink Connector. You'll then see this. On line 11, where it says "aep.endpoint": "", you need to paste in the HTTP API Streaming endpoint URL that you received at the end of exercise 15.3. The HTTP API Streaming endpoint URL looks like this: https://dcs.adobedc.net/collection/d282bbfc8a540321341576275a8d052e9dc4ea80625dd9a5fe5b02397cfd80dc.

Kafka

After pasting it, the body of your request should look like this. Click the blue Send button to create your connector. You'll get an immediate response of the creation of your connector.

Kafka

Click the first request, GET Available Kafka Connect connectors to open it again and click the blue Send button again. you'll now see that a Kafka Connect connector is created.

Kafka

Next, open the third request in the Kafka collection, GET Check Kafka Connect Connector Status. Click the blue Send button, you'll then get a response like the one below, stating that the connector is running.

Kafka

15.4.4 Produce an experience event

Open a new Terminal window by right-clicking your folder kafka_2.13-3.1.0 and clicking New Terminal at Folder.

Kafka

Enter the following command:

bin/kafka-console-producer.sh --broker-list 127.0.0.1:9092 --topic aep

Kafka

You'll then see this. Every new line followed by pushing the Enter button will result in a new message being sent into the topic aep.

Kafka

You can now send a message, which will result in being consumed by the Adobe Experience Platform Sink Connector, and which will be ingested into Adobe Experience Platform in real-time.

Let's do a little demo to test this.

Go to https://builder.adobedemo.com/projects. After logging in with your Adobe ID, you'll see this. Click your website project to open it.

DSN

On the Screens page, click Run.

DSN

You'll then see your demo website open up. Select the URL and copy it to your clipboard.

DSN

Open a new incognito browser window.

DSN

Paste the URL of your demo website, which you copied in the previous step. You'll then be asked to login using your Adobe ID.

DSN

Select your account type and complete the login process.

DSN

You'll then see your website loaded in an incognito browser window. For every demonstration, you'll need to use a fresh, incognito browser window to load your demo website URL.

DSN

Click the Adobe logo icon in the top left corner of your screen to open the Profile Viewer.

Demo

Have a look at the Profile Viewer panel and the Real-time Customer Profile with the Experience Cloud ID as the primary identifier for thi currently unknown customer.

Demo

Go to the Register/Login page. Click CREATE AN ACCOUNT.

Demo

Fill out your details and click Register after which you'll be redirected to the previous page.

Demo

Open the Profile Viewer panel and go to Real-time Customer Profile. On the Profile Viewer panel, you should see all of your personal data displayed, like your newly added email and phone identifiers.

Demo

You may see some experience events based on past activity.

Kafka

Let's change that and send in a Callcenter experience event from Kafka into Adobe Experience Platform.

Take the below sample experience event payload and copy it into a Text Editor.

{
  "header": {
    "datasetId": "61fe23fd242870194a6d779c",
    "imsOrgId": "--aepImsOrgID--",
    "source": {
      "name": "Launch"
    },
    "schemaRef": {
      "id": "https://ns.adobe.com/experienceplatform/schemas/b0190276c6e1e1e99cf56c99f4c07a6e517bf02091dcec90",
      "contentType": "application/vnd.adobe.xed-full+json;version=1"
    }
  },
  "body": {
    "xdmMeta": {
      "schemaRef": {
        "id": "https://ns.adobe.com/experienceplatform/schemas/b0190276c6e1e1e99cf56c99f4c07a6e517bf02091dcec90",
        "contentType": "application/vnd.adobe.xed-full+json;version=1"
      }
    },
    "xdmEntity": {
      "eventType": "callCenterInteractionKafka",
      "_id": "",
      "timestamp": "2022-02-23T09:54:12.232Z",
      "_experienceplatform": {
        "identification": {
          "core": {
            "phoneNumber": ""
          }
        },
        "interactionDetails": {
          "core": {
            "callCenterAgent": {
              "callID": "Support Contact - 3767767",
              "callTopic": "contract",
              "callFeeling": "negative"
            }
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

You'll then see this. You need to manually update 2 fields:

  • _id: please set it to a random id, something like --demoProfileLdap--1234

  • timestamp: update the timestamp to the current date and time

  • phoneNumber: enter the phoneNumber of the account that was just created on the demo website. You can find it on the Profile Viewer panel under Identities.

You also need to check and maybe update these fields:

  • datasetId: you need to copy the Dataset ID for the dataset Demo System - Event Dataset for Call Center (Global v1.1)

  • imsOrgID: your IMS Org ID is --aepImsOrgId--

The field _id needs to be unique for every data ingestion. If you produce multiple events, please make sure that you update the field _id every time to a new, unique value.

Kafka

You should then have something like this:

Kafka

Next, copy your full experience event to your clipboard. The whitespace of your JSON payload needs to be stripped and we'll use an online tool to do that. Go to http://jsonviewer.stack.hu/ to do that.

Kafka

Paste your experience event into the editor and click Remove white space.

Kafka

Next, select all of the output text and copy it to your clipboard.

Kafka

Go back to your Terminal window.

Kafka

Paste the new payload without whitespaces into the Terminal window and click Enter.

Kafka

Next, go back to your demo website and refresh the page. You should now see an experience event on your profile, under Other Events, just like the one below:

Kafka

If you want your call center interactions to appear on the Profile Viewer panel, you need to add the below label and filter in your project on https://builder.adobedemo.com/projects, by going to the tab Profile Viewer.

Kafka

You have finished this exercise.

Last updated