I want to create an EventTime based session-window in Flink, such that it triggers when the event time of a new message is more than 180 seconds greater than the event time of the message, that created the window.
For example:
t1(0 seconds) : msg1 <-- This is the first message which causes the session-windows to be created
t2(13 seconds) : msg2
t3(39 seconds) : msg3
.
.
.
.
t7(190 seconds) : msg7 <-- The event time (t7) is more than 180 seconds than t1 (t7 - t1 = 190), so the window should be triggered and processed now.
t8(193 seconds) : msg8 <-- This message, and all subsequent messages have to be ignored as this window was processed at t7
I want to create a trigger such that the above behavior is achieved through appropriate watermark or onEventTime trigger. Can anyone please provide some examples to achieve this?
The best way to approach this might be with a ProcessFunction, rather than with custom windowing. If, as shown in your example, the events will be processed in timestamp order, then this will be pretty straightforward. If, on the other hand, you have to handle out-of-order events (which is common when working with event time data), it will be somewhat more complex. (Imagine that msg6 with for time 187 arrives after t8. If that's possible, and if that will affect the results you want to produce, then this has to be handled.)
If the events are in order, then the logic would look roughly like this:
Use an AscendingTimestampExtractor as the basis for watermarking.
Use Flink state (perhaps ListState) to store the window contents. When an event arrives, add it to the window and check to see if it has been more than 180 seconds since the first event. If so, process the window contents and clear the list.
If your events can be out-of-order, then use a BoundedOutOfOrdernessTimestampExtractor, and don't process the window's contents until currentWatermark indicates that event time has passed 180 seconds past the window's start time (you can use an event time timer for this). Don't completely clear the list when triggering a window, but just remove the elements that belong to the window that is closing.
