GitHub - nhubbard/ironbeam: A pure-Rust minimal equivalent to Apache Beam

6 min read Original article ↗

Ironbeam

A data processing framework for Rust inspired by Apache Beam and Google Cloud Dataflow. Ironbeam provides a declarative API for building batch data pipelines with support for transformations, aggregations, joins, and I/O operations.

Features

  • Declarative pipeline API with fluent interface
  • Stateless operations: map, filter, flat_map, map_batches
  • Stateful operations: group_by_key, combine_values, keyed aggregations
  • Built-in combiners: Sum, Min, Max, Average, DistinctCount, TopK
  • Join support: inner, left, right, and full outer joins
  • Side inputs for enriching streams with auxiliary data
  • Sequential and parallel execution modes
  • Type-safe with compile-time correctness
  • Optional I/O backends: JSON Lines, CSV, Parquet
  • Optional compression: gzip, zstd, bzip2, xz
  • Metrics collection and checkpointing for fault tolerance
  • Automatic memory spilling to disk for memory-constrained environments
  • Cloud I/O abstractions for provider-agnostic cloud integrations
  • Data validation utilities for production-grade error handling
  • Comprehensive testing framework with fixtures and assertions

Installation

Add to your Cargo.toml:

[dependencies]
ironbeam = "1.0.0"

By default, all features are enabled. To use a minimal configuration:

[dependencies]
ironbeam = { version = "1.0.0", default-features = false }

Available feature flags:

  • io-jsonl - JSON Lines support
  • io-csv - CSV support
  • io-parquet - Parquet support
  • compression-gzip - gzip compression
  • compression-zstd - zstd compression
  • compression-bzip2 - bzip2 compression
  • compression-xz - xz compression
  • parallel-io - parallel I/O operations
  • metrics - pipeline metrics collection
  • checkpointing - checkpoint and recovery support
  • spilling - automatic memory spilling to disk

Quick Start

use ironbeam::*;

fn main() -> anyhow::Result<()> {
    // Create a pipeline
    let p = Pipeline::default();

    // Build a word count pipeline
    let lines = from_vec(&p, vec![
        "hello world".to_string(),
        "hello rust".to_string(),
    ]);

    let counts = lines
        .flat_map(|line: &String| {
            line.split_whitespace()
                .map(|w| w.to_string())
                .collect::<Vec<_>>()
        })
        .key_by(|word: &String| word.clone())
        .map_values(|_word: &String| 1u64)
        .combine_values(Count);

    // Execute and collect results
    let results = counts.collect_seq()?;

    for (word, count) in results {
        println!("{}: {}", word, count);
    }

    Ok(())
}

Core Concepts

Pipeline

A Pipeline is the container for your computation graph. Create one with Pipeline::default(), then attach data sources and transformations.

PCollection

A PCollection<T> represents a distributed collection of elements. Collections are immutable, lazy, and type-safe. Transformations create new collections, and computation happens when you call an execution method like collect_seq() or collect_par().

Transformations

Stateless operations work on individual elements:

  • map - transform each element
  • filter - keep elements matching a predicate
  • flat_map - transform each element into zero or more outputs
  • map_batches - process elements in batches

Stateful operations work on keyed data:

  • key_by - convert to a keyed collection
  • map_values - transform values while preserving keys
  • group_by_key - group values by key
  • combine_values - aggregate values per key
  • top_k_per_key - select top K values per key

Combiners

Combiners provide efficient aggregation. Built-in options include:

  • Count - count elements
  • Sum - sum numeric values
  • Min / Max - find minimum/maximum
  • AverageF64 - compute averages
  • DistinctCount - count unique values
  • TopK - select top K elements

Custom combiners can be implemented via the CombineFn trait.

Joins

Keyed collections support all standard join operations:

let joined = left_collection.join_inner(&right_collection)?;

Available methods: join_inner, join_left, join_right, join_full.

Side Inputs

Enrich pipelines with auxiliary data:

let lookup = side_hashmap(&p, my_map);
data.map_with_side(&lookup, |elem, map| {
    // Use map to enrich elem
})

Execution

Execute pipelines in sequential or parallel mode:

let results = collection.collect_seq()?;  // Single-threaded
let results = collection.collect_par()?;  // Multithreading with Rayon

I/O Examples

JSON Lines

use ironbeam::*;
use serde::{Deserialize, Serialize};

#[derive(Clone, Serialize, Deserialize)]
struct Record {
    id: u32,
    name: String,
}

fn main() -> anyhow::Result<()> {
    let p = Pipeline::default();

    // Read file
    let data = read_jsonl::<Record>(&p, "data.jsonl")?;

    // Process
    let filtered = data.filter(|r: &Record| r.id > 100);

    // Write results
    filtered.write_jsonl("output.jsonl")?;

    Ok(())
}

CSV

let data = read_csv::<Record>(&p, "data.csv")?;
data.write_csv("output.csv")?;

Parquet

let data = read_parquet::<Record>(&p, "data.parquet")?;
data.write_parquet("output.parquet")?;

Compression

Compression is automatically detected by file extension:

// Read compressed file
let data = read_jsonl::<Record>(&p, "data.jsonl.gz")?;

// Write compressed file
data.write_jsonl("output.jsonl.zst")?;

Supported extensions: .gz, .zst, .bz2, .xz

Advanced Features

Windowing

Group time-series data into fixed or sliding windows:

let windowed = data
    .window_fixed(Duration::from_secs(60))
    .group_by_key()
    .combine_values(Sum);

Checkpointing

Save and restore the pipeline's state for fault tolerance:

data.checkpoint("checkpoints/step1")?;

// Later, recover from checkpoint
let recovered = recover_checkpoint::<MyType>(&p, "checkpoints/step1")?;

Metrics

Collect pipeline execution metrics:

let result = collection.collect_seq()?;
let metrics = p.get_metrics();
println!("Elements processed: {}", metrics.elements_processed);

Automatic Memory Spilling

For memory-constrained environments, Ironbeam can automatically spill data to disk when memory limits are exceeded:

use ironbeam::spill::SpillConfig;
use ironbeam::spill_integration::init_spilling;

// Configure automatic spilling with a 100MB memory limit
init_spilling(SpillConfig::new()
    .with_memory_limit(100 * 1024 * 1024)
    .with_spill_directory("/tmp/ironbeam-spill")
    .with_compression(true));

// Now run your pipeline - spilling happens automatically
let results = large_dataset
    .map(|x| heavy_computation(x))
    .collect_seq()?;

Data is transparently spilled to disk when memory pressure is detected and automatically restored when needed. This allows processing datasets larger than available RAM without manual intervention.

Learn more about spilling →

Cloud I/O Abstractions

Write provider-agnostic code that works with any cloud service:

use ironbeam::io::cloud::*;

// Use fake implementations for testing
let storage = FakeObjectIO::new();
storage.put_object("bucket", "key", b"data")?;

// In production, swap in real implementations (AWS S3, GCS, Azure Blob, etc.)
// without changing your business logic

Supported cloud service categories:

  • Storage: Object storage (S3/GCS/Azure), warehouses (BigQuery/Redshift), databases
  • Messaging: Pub/sub (Kafka/Kinesis), queues (SQS), notifications (SNS)
  • Compute: Serverless functions (Lambda/Cloud Functions)
  • ML: Model inference (SageMaker/Vertex AI)
  • Observability: Metrics, logging, configuration, caching

All traits are synchronous by design and include fake implementations for unit testing.

Learn more about cloud I/O →

Data Validation

Handle bad data gracefully in production pipelines:

use ironbeam::validation::*;

impl Validate for MyRecord {
    fn validate(&self) -> ValidationResult {
        let mut errors = Vec::new();

        if self.email.is_empty() {
            errors.push(ValidationError::field("email", "Email required"));
        }

        if self.age < 0 || self.age > 150 {
            errors.push(ValidationError::field("age", "Invalid age"));
        }

        if errors.is_empty() { Ok(()) } else { Err(errors) }
    }
}

// Apply validation with configurable error handling
let validated = data
    .try_map(|record: &MyRecord| record.validate())
    .collect_fail_fast()?; // Or use .collect_skip_errors()

Learn more about validation →

Examples

The examples/ directory contains complete demonstrations:

  • etl_pipeline.rs - Extract, transform, load workflow
  • advanced_joins.rs - Join operations
  • windowing_aggregations.rs - Time-based windowing
  • combiners_showcase.rs - Using built-in combiners
  • compressed_io.rs - Working with compressed files
  • checkpointing_demo.rs - Checkpoint and recovery
  • metrics_example.rs - Collecting metrics
  • cloud_io_demo.rs - Cloud service integrations
  • data_quality_validation.rs - Production data validation
  • testing_pipeline.rs - Testing patterns

Run examples with:

cargo run --example etl_pipeline --features io-jsonl,io-csv
cargo run --example cloud_io_demo

Testing Your Pipelines

Ironbeam includes a comprehensive testing framework with utilities specifically designed for pipeline testing:

Test Utilities

use ironbeam::testing::*;

#[test]
fn test_my_pipeline() -> anyhow::Result<()> {
    let p = TestPipeline::new();

    let result = from_vec(&p, vec![1, 2, 3])
        .map(|x: &i32| x * 2)
        .collect_seq()?;

    // Specialized assertions for collections
    assert_collections_equal(result, vec![2, 4, 6]);
    assert_all(&result, |x| x % 2 == 0);

    Ok(())
}

Pre-built Test Fixtures

use ironbeam::testing::fixtures::*;

// Ready-to-use test datasets
let logs = sample_log_entries();       // Web server logs
let users = user_product_interactions(); // Relational data
let series = time_series_data();       // Sensor readings

Debug Utilities

// Inspect data during test execution
let result = data
    .debug_inspect("after filter")
    .filter(|x: &i32| x > 10)
    .debug_count("filtered count")
    .collect_seq()?;

Learn more about testing →

Running Tests

Run the full test suite:

Run tests with specific features:

cargo test --features spilling

For coverage:

cargo tarpaulin --out Html

License

This project uses the Rust 2024 edition and requires a recent Rust toolchain.