To simplify configuration, SHDP provides a dedicated namespace for most of its components. However, one can opt to configure the beans directly through the usual <bean> definition. For more information about XML Schema-based configuration in Spring, see this appendix in the Spring Framework reference documentation.

To use the SHDP namespace, one just needs to import it inside the configuration:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
   xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
   xmlns:hdp="http://www.springframework.org/schema/hadoop"
   xsi:schemaLocation="
    http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
    http://www.springframework.org/schema/hadoop http://www.springframework.org/schema/hadoop/spring-hadoop.xsd">

   <bean id ... >

   <hdp:configuration ...>
</beans>

Once declared, the namespace elements can be declared simply by appending the aforementioned prefix. Note that is possible to change the default namespace, for example from <beans> to <hdp>. This is useful for configuration composed mainly of Hadoop components as it avoids declaring the prefix. To achieve this, simply swap the namespace prefix declaration above:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans:beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/hadoop"
   xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
   xmlns:beans="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
   xsi:schemaLocation="
    http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
    http://www.springframework.org/schema/hadoop http://www.springframework.org/schema/gemfire/spring-hadoop.xsd">
	    
    <beans:bean id ... >
	
    <configuration ...>
	
</beans:beans>

For the remainder of this doc, to improve readability, the XML examples will simply refer to the <hdp> namespace without the namespace declaration, where possible.

In order to use Hadoop, one needs to first configure it namely by creating a Configuration object. The configuration holds information about the job tracker, the input, output format and the various other parameters of the map reduce job.

In its simplest form, the configuration definition is a one liner:

<hdp:configuration />

The declaration above defines a Configuration bean (to be precise a factory bean of type ConfigurationFactoryBean) named, by default, hadoopConfiguration. The default name is used, by conventions, by the other elements that require a configuration - this leads to simple and very concise configurations as the main components can automatically wire themselves up without requiring any specific configuration.

For scenarios where the defaults need to be tweaked, one can pass in additional configuration files:

<hdp:configuration resources="classpath:/custom-site.xml, classpath:/hq-site.xml">

In this example, two additional Hadoop configuration resources are added to the configuration.

	Note
	Note that the configuration makes use of Spring's Resource abstraction to locate the file. This allows various search patterns to be used, depending on the running environment or the prefix specified (if any) by the value - in this example the classpath is used.

In addition to referencing configuration resources, one can tweak Hadoop settings directly through Java Properties. This can be quite handy when just a few options need to be changed:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xmlns:hdp="http://www.springframework.org/schema/hadoop"
	xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/hadoop http://www.springframework.org/schema/hadoop/spring-hadoop.xsd">
        
     <hdp:configuration>
        fs.default.name=hdfs://localhost:9000
        hadoop.tmp.dir=/tmp/hadoop
        electric=sea
     </hdp:configuration>
</beans>

One can further customize the settings by avoiding the so called hard-coded values by externalizing them so they can be replaced at runtime, based on the existing environment without touching the configuration:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xmlns:hdp="http://www.springframework.org/schema/hadoop"
    xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
	xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/context http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/hadoop http://www.springframework.org/schema/hadoop/spring-hadoop.xsd">
        
     <hdp:configuration>
        fs.default.name=${hd.fs}
        hadoop.tmp.dir=file://${java.io.tmpdir}
        hangar=${number:18}
     </hdp:configuration>
     
     <context:property-placeholder location="classpath:hadoop.properties" />     
</beans>

Through Spring's property placeholder support, SpEL and the environment abstraction (available in Spring 3.1). one can externalize environment specific properties from the main code base easing the deployment across multiple machines. In the example above, the default file system is replaced based on the properties available in hadoop.properties while the temp dir is determined dynamically through SpEL. Both approaches offer a lot of flexbility in adapting to the running environment - in fact we use this approach extensivly in the Spring for Apache Hadoop test suite to cope with the differences between the different development boxes and the CI server.

Additionally, external Properties files can be loaded, Properties beans (typically declared through Spring's util namespace). Along with the nested properties declaration, this allows customized configurations to be easily declared:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xmlns:hdp="http://www.springframework.org/schema/hadoop"
    xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
    xmlns:util="http://www.springframework.org/schema/util"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/context http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/util http://www.springframework.org/schema/util/spring-util.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/hadoop http://www.springframework.org/schema/hadoop/spring-hadoop.xsd">

   <!-- merge the local properties, the props bean and the two properties files -->        
   <hdp:configuration properties-ref="props" properties-location="cfg-1.properties, cfg-2.properties">
      star=chasing
      captain=eo
   </hdp:configuration>
     
   <util:properties id="props" location="props.properties"/>     
</beans>

When merging several properties, ones defined locally win. In the example above the configuration properties are the primary source, followed by the props bean followed by the external properties file based on their defined order. While it's not typical for a configuration to refer to use so many properties, the example showcases the various options available.

	Note
	For more properties utilities, including using the System as a source or fallback, or control over the merging order, consider using Spring's PropertiesFactoryBean (which is what Spring for Apache Hadoop and util:properties use underneath).

It is possible to create configuration based on existing ones - this allows one to create dedicated configurations, slightly different from the main ones, usable for certain jobs (such as streaming - more on that below). Simply use the configuration-ref attribute to refer to the parent configuration - all its properties will be inherited and overridden as specified by the child:

<!-- default name is 'hadoopConfiguration' -->
<hdp:configuration>
    fs.default.name=${hd.fs}
    hadoop.tmp.dir=file://${java.io.tmpdir}
</hdp:configuration>
     
<hdp:configuration id="custom" configuration-ref="hadoopConfiguration">
    fs.default.name=${custom.hd.fs}
</hdp:configuration>     

...

Make sure though you specify a different name since otherwise, since both definitions will have the same name, the Spring container will interpret this as being the same definition (and will usually consider the last one found).

Another option worth mentioning is register-url-handler which, as the name implies, automatically registers an URL handler in the running VM. This allows urls referrencing hdfs resource (by using the hdfs prefix) to be properly resolved - if the handler is not registered, such an URL would through an exception since the VM does not know what hdfs mean.

	Note
	Since only one URL handler can be registered per VM, at most once, this option is turned off by default. Due to the reasons mentioned before, once enabled if it fails, it will log the error but will not throw an exception. If your hdfs URLs stop working, make sure to investigate this aspect.

Last but not least a reminder that one can mix and match all these options to her preference. In general, consider externalizing configuration since it allows easier updates without interfering with the application configuration. When dealing with multiple, similar configuration use configuration composition as it tends to keep the definitions concise, in sync and easy to update.

Once the Hadoop configuration is taken care of, one needs to actually submit some work to it. SHDP makes it easy to configure and run Hadoop jobs whether they are vanilla map-reduce type or streaming. Let us start with an example:

<hdp:job id="mr-job" 
  input-path="/input/" output-path="/ouput/"
  mapper="org.apache.hadoop.examples.WordCount.TokenizerMapper"
  reducer="org.apache.hadoop.examples.WordCount.IntSumReducer"/>

The declaration above creates a typical Hadoop Job: specifies its input and output, the mapper and the reducer classes. Notice that there is no reference to the Hadoop configuration above - that's because, if not specified, the default naming convention (hadoopConfiguration) will be used instead. Neither are the key or value types - these two are automatically determined through a best-effort attempt by analyzing the class information of the mapper and the reducer. Of course, these settings can be overridden: the former through the configuration-ref element, the latter through key and value attributes. There are plenty of options available not shown in the example (for simplicity) such as the jar (specified directly or by class), sort or group comparator, the combiner, the partitioner, the codecs to use or the input/output format just to name a few - they are supported, just take a look at the SHDP schema (Appendix C, Spring for Apache Hadoop Schema) or simply trigger auto-completion (usually ALT+SPACE) in your IDE; if it supports XML namespaces and is properly configured it will display the available elements. Additionally one can extend the default Hadoop configuration object and add any special properties not available in the namespace or its backing bean (JobFactoryBean).

It is worth pointing out that per-job specific configurations are supported by specifying the custom properties directly or referring to them (more information on the pattern is available here):

<hdp:job id="mr-job" 
  input-path="/input/" output-path="/ouput/"
  mapper="mapper class" reducer="reducer class"
  jar-by-class="class used for jar detection"
  properties-location="classpath:special-job.properties">
    electric=sea
</hdp:job>

job provides additional properties, such as the generic options, however one that is worth mentioning is jar which allows a job (and its dependencies) to be loaded form entirely from a specified jar. This is useful for isolating jobs and avoiding classpath and versioning collisions. Note that provisioning of the jar into the cluster, still depends on the target environment - see the aforementioned section for more info (such as libs).

<hdp:streaming id="streaming" 
  input-path="/input/" output-path="/ouput/"
  mapper="${path.cat}" reducer="${path.wc}"/>

<hdp:streaming id="streaming-env" 
  input-path="/input/" output-path="/ouput/"
  mapper="${path.cat}" reducer="${path.wc}">
  <hdp:cmd-env>
     EXAMPLE_DIR=/home/example/dictionaries/
     ...
  </hdp:cmd-env>
</hdp:streaming>

The jobs, after being created and configured, need to be submitted for execution to a Hadoop cluster. For non-trivial cases, a coordinating, workflow solution such as Spring Batch is recommended . However for basic job submission SHDP provides the job-runner element (backed by JobRunner class) which submits several jobs sequentially (and waits by default for their completion):

<hdp:job-runner id="myjob-runner" pre-action="cleanup-script" post-action="export-results" job="myjob" run-at-startup="true"/>

<hdp:job id="myjob"  input-path="/input/" output-path="/output/"
	mapper="org.apache.hadoop.examples.WordCount.TokenizerMapper"
	reducer="org.apache.hadoop.examples.WordCount.IntSumReducer" />

Multiple jobs can be specified and even nested if they are not used outside the runner:

<hdp:job-runner id="myjobs-runner" pre-action="cleanup-script" job="myjob1, myjob2" run-at-startup="true"/>
 	
<hdp:job id="myjob1"  ... />
<hdp:streaming id="myjob2"  ... />

One or multiple Map-Reduce jobs can be specified through the job attribute in the order of the execution. The runner will trigger the execution during the application start-up (notice the run-at-startup flag which is by default false). Do note that the runner will not run unless triggered manually or if run-at-startup is set to true. Additionally the runner (as in fact do all runners in SHDP) allows one or multiple pre and post actions to be specified to be executed before and after each run. Typically other runners (such as other jobs or scripts) can be specified but any JDK Callable can be passed in. For more information on runners, see the dedicated chapter.

Note

As the Hadoop job submittion and execution (when wait-for-completion is true) is blocking, JobRunner uses a JDK Executor to start (or stop) a job. The default implementation, SyncTaskExecutor uses the calling thread to execute the job, mimicking the hadoop command line behaviour. However, as the hadoop jobs are time-consuming, in some cases this can lead to “application freeze”, preventing normal operations or even application shutdown from occuring properly. Before going into production, it is recommended to double-check whether this strategy is suitable or whether a throttled or pooled implementation is better. One can customize the behaviour through executor-ref parameter.

The job runner also allows running jobs to be cancelled (or killed) at shutdown. This applies only to jobs that the runner waits for (wait-for-completion is true) using a different executor then the default - that is, using a different thread then the calling one (since otherwise the calling thread has to wait for the job to finish first before executing the next task). To customize this behaviour, one should set kill-job-at-shutdown attribute to false and/or change the executor-ref implementation.

<hdp:job-tasklet id="hadoop-tasklet" job-ref="mr-job" wait-for-completion="true" />

It is common for Hadoop utilities and libraries to be started from the command-line (ex: hadoop jar some.jar). SHDP offers generic support for such cases provided that the packages in question are built on top of Hadoop standard infrastructure, namely Tool and ToolRunner classes. As oppose to the command-line usage, Tool instances benefit from Spring's IoC features; they can be parameterized, created and destroyed on demand and have their properties (such as the Hadoop configuration) injected.

Consider the typical jar example - invoking a class with some (two in this case) arguments (notice that the Hadoop configuration properties are passed as well):

bin/hadoop jar -conf hadoop-site.xml -jt darwin:50020 -D property=value someJar.jar org.foo.SomeTool data/in.txt data/out.txt

Since SHDP has first-class support for configuring Hadoop, the so called generic options aren't needed any more, even more so since typically there is only one Hadoop configuration per application. Through tool-runner element (and its backing ToolRunner class) one typically just needs to specify the Tool implementation and its arguments:

<hdp:tool-runner id="someTool" tool-class="org.foo.SomeTool" run-at-startup="true">
   <hdp:arg value="data/in.txt"/>
   <hdp:arg value="data/out.txt"/>
   
   property=value
</hdp:tool-runner>

Additionally the runner (just like the job runner) allows one or multiple pre and post actions to be specified to be executed before and after each run. Typically other runners (such as other jobs or scripts) can be specified but any JDK Callable can be passed in. Do note that the runner will not run unless triggered manually or if run-at-startup is set to true. For more information on runners, see the dedicated chapter.

The previous example assumes the Tool dependencies (such as its class) are available in the classpath. If that is not the case, tool-runner allows a jar to be specified:

<hdp:tool-runner ... jar="myTool.jar">
    ...
</hdp:tool-runner>

The jar is used to instantiate and start the tool - in fact all its dependencies are loaded from the jar meaning they no longer need to be part of the classpath. This mechanism provides proper isolation between tools as each of them might depend on certain libraries with different versions; rather then adding them all into the same app (which might be impossible due to versioning conflicts ), one can simply point to the different jars and be on her way. Note that when using a jar, if the main class (as specified by the Main-Class entry) is the target Tool, one can skip specifying the tool as it will picked up automatically.

Like the rest of the SHDP elements, tool-runner allows the passed Hadoop configuration (by default hadoopConfiguration but specified in the example for clarity) to be customized accordingly; the snippet only highlights the property initialization for simplicity but more options are available. Since usually the Tool implementation has a default argument, one can use the tool-class attribute however it is possible to refer to another Tool instance or declare a nested one:

<hdp:tool-runner id="someTool" run-at-startup="true">
   <hdp:tool>
      <bean class="org.foo.AnotherTool" p:input="data/in.txt" p:output="data/out.txt"/>
   </hdp:tool>
</hdp:tool-runner>

This is quite convenient if the Tool class provides setters or richer constructors. Note that by default the tool-runner does not executes the Tooluntil its definition is actually called - this behavior can be changed through the run-at-startup attribute above.

hadoop jar job1.jar -files fullpath:props.properties -Dconfig=config.properties ...
hadoop jar job2.jar arg1 arg2...
...
hadoop jar job10.jar ...

<hdp:tool-runner id="job1" tool-class="job1.Tool" jar="job1.jar" files="fullpath:props.properties" properties-location="config.properties"/>
<hdp:tool-runner id="job2" jar="job2.jar">
   <hdp:arg value="arg1"/>
   <hdp:arg value="arg2"/>
</hdp:tool-runner>
<hdp:tool-runner id="job3" jar="job3.jar"/>
...

<hdp:tool-tasklet id="tool-tasklet" tool-ref="some-tool" />

SHDP also provides support for executing vanilla Hadoop jars. Thus the famous WordCount example:

bin/hadoop jar hadoop-examples.jar wordcount /wordcount/input /wordcount/output

becomes

<hdp:jar-runner id="wordcount" jar="hadoop-examples.jar" run-at-startup="true">
    <hdp:arg value="wordcount"/>
    <hdp:arg value="/wordcount/input"/>
    <hdp:arg value="/wordcount/output"/>
</hdp:jar-runner>

	Note
	Just like the hadoop jar command, by default the jar support reads the jar's Main-Class if none is specified. This can be customized through the main-class attribute.

Additionally the runner (just like the job runner) allows one or multiple pre and post actions to be specified to be executed before and after each run. Typically other runners (such as other jobs or scripts) can be specified but any JDK Callable can be passed in. Do note that the runner will not run unless triggered manually or if run-at-startup is set to true. For more information on runners, see the dedicated chapter.

The jar support provides a nice and easy migration path from jar invocations from the command-line to SHDP (note that Hadoop generic options are also supported). Especially since SHDP enables Hadoop Configuration objects created during the jar execution, to automatically inherit the context Hadoop configuration. In fact, just like other SHDP elements, the jar element allows configurations properties to be declared locally, just for the jar run. So for example, if one would use the following declaration:

<hdp:jar-runner id="wordcount" jar="hadoop-examples.jar" run-at-startup="true">
    <hdp:arg value="wordcount"/>
    ...
    speed=fast
</hdp:jar-runner>

inside the jar code, one could do the following:

assert "fast".equals(new Configuration().get("speed"));

This enabled basic Hadoop jars to use, without changes, the enclosing application Hadoop configuration.

And while we think it is a useful feature (that is why we added it in the first place), we strongly recommend using the tool support instead or migrate to it; there are several reasons for this mainly because there are no contracts to use, leading to very poor embeddability caused by:

SHDP tries to use sensible defaults to provide the best integration experience possible but at the end of the day, without any contract in place, there are no guarantees. Hence why using the Tool interface, is a much better alternative.

<hdp:jar-tasklet id="jar-tasklet" jar="some-jar.jar" />

DistributedCache is a Hadoop facility for distributing application-specific, large, read-only files ( text, archives, jars and so on) efficiently. Applications specify the files to be cached via urls (hdfs://) using DistributedCache and the framework will copy the necessary files to the slave nodes before any tasks for the job are executed on that node. Its efficiency stems from the fact that the files are only copied once per job and the ability to cache archives which are un-archived on the slaves. Note that DistributedCache assumes that the files to be cached (and specified via hdfs:// urls) are already present on the Hadoop FileSystem.

SHDP provides first-class configuration for the distributed cache through its cache element (backed by DistributedCacheFactoryBean class), allowing files and archives to be easily distributed across nodes:

<hdp:cache create-symlink="true">
   <hdp:classpath value="/cp/some-library.jar#library.jar" />
   <hdp:cache value="/cache/some-archive.tgz#main-archive" />
   <hdp:cache value="/cache/some-resource.res" />
   <hdp:local value="some-file.txt" />
</hdp:cache>

The definition above registers several resources with the cache (adding them to the job cache or classpath) and creates symlinks for them. As described in the DistributedCache documentation, the declaration format is (absolute-path#link-name). The link name is determined by the URI fragment (the text following the # such as #library.jar or #main-archive above) - if no name is specified, the cache bean will infer one based on the resource file name. Note that one does not have to specify the hdfs://node:port prefix as these are automatically determined based on the configuration wired into the bean; this prevents environment settings from being hard-coded into the configuration which becomes portable. Additionally based on the resource extension, the definition differentiates between archives (.tgz, .tar.gz, .zip and .tar) which will be uncompressed, and regular files that are copied as-is. As with the rest of the namespace declarations, the definition above relies on defaults - since it requires a Hadoop Configuration and FileSystem objects and none are specified (through configuration-ref and file-system-ref) it falls back to the default naming and is wired with the bean named hadoopConfiguration, creating the FileSystem automatically.

Warning

Clients setting up a classpath in the DistributedCache, running on Windows platforms should set the System path.separator property to :. Otherwise the classpath will be set incorrectly and will be ignored; see HADOOP-9123 bug report for more information. There are multiple ways to change the path.separator System property - a quick one being a simple script in Javascript (that uses the Rhino package bundled with the JDK) that runs at start-up: <hdp:script language="javascript" run-at-startup="true"> // set System 'path.separator' to ':' - see HADOOP-9123 java.lang.System.setProperty("path.separator", ":") </hdp:script>

The job, streaming and tool all support a subset of generic options, specifically archives, files and libs. libs is probably the most useful as it enriches a job classpath (typically with some jars) - however the other two allow resources or archives to be copied through-out the cluster for the job to consume. Whenver faced with provisioning issues, revisit these options as they can help up significantly. Note that the fs, jt or conf options are not supported - these are designed for command-line usage, for bootstrapping the application. This is no longer the case, as the SHDP offers first-class support for defining and customizing Hadoop configurations.