ekuiper-new/docs/en_US/extension/overview.md

Extensions

Kuiper allows user to customize the different kinds of extensions.

• The source extension is used for extending different stream source, such as consuming data from other message brokers. Kuiper has built-in source support for MQTT broker.
• Sink/Action extension is used for extending pub/push data to different targets, such as database, other message system, web interfaces or file systems. Built-in action support in Kuiper, see MQTT & log files.
• Functions extension allows user to extend different functions that used in SQL. Built-in functions supported in Kuiper, see functions.

Kuiper extensions are based on golang plugin system. The general steps to make extensions are:

1. Create the plugin package that implements required source, sink or function interface.
2. Compile the plugin into a .so file, and put it into sources or sinks or functions folder under plugins folder.

Notice that, there are some restrictions for the names:

1. The name of .so file must be camel case with an upper case first letter. For example, MySource.so or MySink.so.
2. The name of the export symbol of the plugin must be camel case with an upper case first letter.

Currently golang plugins are only supported on Linux and macOS which poses the same limitation for Kuiper extensions.

Setup the plugin developing environment

It is required to build the plugin with exactly the same version of dependencies. And the plugin must implement interfaces exported by Kuiper, so the Kuiper project must be in the gopath.

A typical environment for developing plugins is to put the plugin and Kuiper in the same project. To set it up:

1. Clone Kuiper project.
2. Create the plugin implementation file inside plugins/sources or plugin/sinks or plugin/functions according to what extension type is developing.
3. Build the file as plugin into the same folder. The build command is typically like: bash go build --buildmode=plugin -o plugins/sources/MySource.so plugins/sources/my_source.go

Please read below for how to realize the different extensions.

• Source extension
• Sink/Action extension
• Function extension