Amazon Kinesis Construct Library

AWS CDK v1 has reached End-of-Support on 2023-06-01. This package is no longer being updated, and users should migrate to AWS CDK v2.

For more information on how to migrate, see the Migrating to AWS CDK v2 guide.

Amazon Kinesis provides collection and processing of large streams of data records in real time. Kinesis data streams can be used for rapid and continuous data intake and aggregation.

Table Of Contents

• Streams
  • Encryption
  • Import
  • Permission Grants
    • Read Permissions
    • Write Permissions
    • Custom Permissions
  • Metrics

Streams

Amazon Kinesis Data Streams ingests a large amount of data in real time, durably stores the data, and makes the data available for consumption.

Using the CDK, a new Kinesis stream can be created as part of the stack using the construct's constructor. You may specify the streamName to give your own identifier to the stream. If not, CloudFormation will generate a name.

new kinesis.Stream(this, 'MyFirstStream', {
  streamName: 'my-awesome-stream',
});

You can also specify properties such as shardCount to indicate how many shards the stream should choose and a retentionPeriod to specify how long the data in the shards should remain accessible. Read more at Creating and Managing Streams

new kinesis.Stream(this, 'MyFirstStream', {
  streamName: 'my-awesome-stream',
  shardCount: 3,
  retentionPeriod: Duration.hours(48),
});

Encryption

Stream encryption enables server-side encryption using an AWS KMS key for a specified stream.

Encryption is enabled by default on your stream with the master key owned by Kinesis Data Streams in regions where it is supported.

new kinesis.Stream(this, 'MyEncryptedStream');

You can enable encryption on your stream with a user-managed key by specifying the encryption property. A KMS key will be created for you and associated with the stream.

new kinesis.Stream(this, 'MyEncryptedStream', {
  encryption: kinesis.StreamEncryption.KMS,
});

You can also supply your own external KMS key to use for stream encryption by specifying the encryptionKey property.

const key = new kms.Key(this, 'MyKey');

new kinesis.Stream(this, 'MyEncryptedStream', {
  encryption: kinesis.StreamEncryption.KMS,
  encryptionKey: key,
});

Import

Any Kinesis stream that has been created outside the stack can be imported into your CDK app.

Streams can be imported by their ARN via the Stream.fromStreamArn() API

const importedStream = kinesis.Stream.fromStreamArn(this, 'ImportedStream',
  'arn:aws:kinesis:us-east-2:123456789012:stream/f3j09j2230j',
);

Encrypted Streams can also be imported by their attributes via the Stream.fromStreamAttributes() API

const importedStream = kinesis.Stream.fromStreamAttributes(this, 'ImportedEncryptedStream', {
  streamArn: 'arn:aws:kinesis:us-east-2:123456789012:stream/f3j09j2230j',
  encryptionKey: kms.Key.fromKeyArn(this, 'key',
    'arn:aws:kms:us-east-1:123456789012:key/12345678-1234-1234-1234-123456789012',
  ),
});

Permission Grants

IAM roles, users or groups which need to be able to work with Amazon Kinesis streams at runtime should be granted IAM permissions.

Any object that implements the IGrantable interface (has an associated principal) can be granted permissions by calling:

• grantRead(principal) - grants the principal read access
• grantWrite(principal) - grants the principal write permissions to a Stream
• grantReadWrite(principal) - grants principal read and write permissions

Read Permissions

Grant read access to a stream by calling the grantRead() API. If the stream has an encryption key, read permissions will also be granted to the key.

const lambdaRole = new iam.Role(this, 'Role', {
  assumedBy: new iam.ServicePrincipal('lambda.amazonaws.com'),
  description: 'Example role...',
});

const stream = new kinesis.Stream(this, 'MyEncryptedStream', {
  encryption: kinesis.StreamEncryption.KMS,
});

// give lambda permissions to read stream
stream.grantRead(lambdaRole);

The following read permissions are provided to a service principal by the grantRead() API:

• kinesis:DescribeStreamSummary
• kinesis:GetRecords
• kinesis:GetShardIterator
• kinesis:ListShards
• kinesis:SubscribeToShard

Write Permissions

Grant write permissions to a stream is provided by calling the grantWrite() API. If the stream has an encryption key, write permissions will also be granted to the key.

const lambdaRole = new iam.Role(this, 'Role', {
  assumedBy: new iam.ServicePrincipal('lambda.amazonaws.com'),
  description: 'Example role...',
});

const stream = new kinesis.Stream(this, 'MyEncryptedStream', {
  encryption: kinesis.StreamEncryption.KMS,
});

// give lambda permissions to write to stream
stream.grantWrite(lambdaRole);

The following write permissions are provided to a service principal by the grantWrite() API:

• kinesis:ListShards
• kinesis:PutRecord
• kinesis:PutRecords

Custom Permissions

You can add any set of permissions to a stream by calling the grant() API.

const user = new iam.User(this, 'MyUser');

const stream = new kinesis.Stream(this, 'MyStream');

// give my user permissions to list shards
stream.grant(user, 'kinesis:ListShards');

Metrics

You can use common metrics from your stream to create alarms and/or dashboards. The stream.metric('MetricName') method creates a metric with the stream namespace and dimension. You can also use pre-define methods like stream.metricGetRecordsSuccess(). To find out more about Kinesis metrics check Monitoring the Amazon Kinesis Data Streams Service with Amazon CloudWatch.

const stream = new kinesis.Stream(this, 'MyStream');

// Using base metric method passing the metric name
stream.metric('GetRecords.Success');

// using pre-defined metric method
stream.metricGetRecordsSuccess();

// using pre-defined and overriding the statistic
stream.metricGetRecordsSuccess({ statistic: 'Maximum' });