24. GeoMesa Blob Store

Warning

The GeoMesa Blob Store is deprecated and will be removed in a future version.

The GeoMesa Blob Store is found in geomesa-blobstore in the source distribution.

The GeoMesaIndexedBlobStore is an interface that describes the function of a GeoMesa BlobStore, which is to store and retrieve files that have spatio-temporal data associated with them. A GeoMesa Blobstore is created by combining a geotools data store and a backing blob store which will contain the blobs separated from the geo index. The BlobStore interface can be used to implement compatibility with other databases or distributed file systems.

During ingest of a file into a GeoMesa BlobStore, a pluggable system of FileHandlers examines the files (and associated maps of parameters) and creates SimpleFeatures which are the written to a GeoMesa data store while the blobs are persisted using a class that implements the BlobStore interface.

File retrieval is a two-step process. First a query is made to the GeoMesa FeatureStore. The returned SimpleFeatures will contain a URI field. That URI points to the desired file stored in Accumulo, and can be retrieved by the GeoMesaIndexedBlobStore API or by the REST interface.

24.1. FileHandler Interface

The FileHandler interface is designed to allow file handling in the Blobstore to be pluggable. Implementors should implement org.locationtech.geomesa.blob.api.handlers.FileHandler or extend the abstract implementation org.locationtech.geomesa.blob.api.handlers.AbstractFileHandler. The class WKTFileHandler serves as an example of that latter approach.

FileHandler implementations are loaded at runtime by the Java ServiceLoader. As such, available implementations should have their classname registered in META-INF/services/org.locationtech.geomesa.blob.api.FileHandler.

24.2. BlobStore Interface

The BlobStore interface is designed to allow the backing blob store of a GeoMesaIndexedBlobStore to be pluggable. Implementors should implement org.locationtech.geomesa.blob.api.BlobStore interface. The AccumuloBlobStoreImpl serves as an example implementation of a BlobStore .

As of this time the BlobStore interface does not yet use the Service Provider Interface.

24.3. Provided File Handlers

The BlobStore API contains by default the WKTFileHandler and ByteArrayHandler handlers. The WKTFileHandler allows users to ingest any file by associating a WKT geometry to a file. Similarly the ByteArrayHandler allows users to ingest arbitrary byte arrays accompanied with spatio-temporal attributes.

Along with these included handlers, the GeoMesa BlobStore has two sub modules of additional handlers in the geomesa-blobstore-handlers module.

24.3.1. GeoMesa-BlobStore-EXIF

The EXIF module contains the MetadataFileHandler which can parse EXIF metadata to retrieve geolocation information. This enables ingest of large collections of geotagged images into a GeoMesa BlobStore.

24.3.2. GeoMesa-BlobStore-GDAL

The GDAL module contains the GDALFileHandler which utilizes GDAL to extract geolocation information and time from raster/imagery files supported by GDAL 2.0.0. For a complete list of GDAL supported file formats please refer to: GDAL formats list.

To utilize this handler the user must have compiled GDAL Java bindings and have placed relevant JNI libraries in the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. To build GDAL and the JNI libraries, follow the instructions here: GDAL JNI build instructions.

24.4. GeoMesa-BlobStore-Accumulo

The BlobStore-Accumulo module contains concrete implementations of the GeoMesaIndexedBlobStore interface for Accumulo as well as an implementation of the BlobStore interface for Accumulo, the AccumuloBlobStoreImpl class. The GeoMesaAccumuloBlobStore utilizes a GeoMesa Accumulo DataStore as well as the AccumuloBlobStoreImpl for the Blob persistance layer.

File retrieval is a two-step process. First a query is made to the GeoMesa FeatureStore. The returned SimpleFeatures will contain a URI field. That URI points to the desired file stored in Accumulo, and can be retrieved by the GeoMesaIndexedBlobStore API or by the REST interface.

24.5. REST API

The GeoMesa BlobStore comes with a RESTful web interface servlet that can be used in place of more direct programmatic access via the Java and Scala classes. As of now the the BlobStore only provides an interface to an Accumulo backed DataStore and BlobStore. Once the servlet is deployed the RESTful api for the Blobstore can be easily utilized via cURL.

DataStores are managed by assigning them to aliases, this allows users to connect to multiple blobstores. To Register a GeoMesa Blob Store to an alias (in this case myBlobStore):

curl -d 'accumulo.instance.id=myCloud' -d 'accumulo.zookeepers=zoo1,zoo2,zoo3' -d 'accumulo.catalog=myBlobStore' -d 'accumulo.user=user' -d 'accumulo.password=password' http://localhost:8080/geoserver/geomesa/blobstore/ds/myBlobStore

Other Blob Store commands:

  • DELETE /ds/:alias - Delete a previously registered GeoMesa data store
  • GET /ds/:alias - Display a registered GeoMesa data store
  • GET /ds/ - Display all registered BlobStores

To ingest a file:

curl -X POST -F file=@filename.whatever http://localhost:8080/geoserver/geomesa/blobstore/blob/:alias

To GET a file with the original filename preserved via id, run:

curl -JO http://localhost:8080/geoserver/geomesa/blobstore/blob/:alias/some-id/

The Blobstore servlet also has optional GZip support which can be used by adding the --compressed cURL parameter.

curl --compressed -JO http://localhost:8080/geoserver/geomesa/blobstore/blob/:alias/some-id

To DELETE a file from the blobstore, you must do so by id:

curl -X "DELETE" http://localhost:8080/geoserver/geomesa/blobstore/blob/:alias/some-id

24.6. Servlet Configuration Options

File upload constraints for the BlobstoreServlet can be configured with the following system properties:

org.locationtech.geomesa.blob.api.maxFileSizeMB    (defaults to 50MB)
org.locationtech.geomesa.blob.api.maxRequestSizeMB (defaults to 100MB)

The expected unit for these properties is in MB, so setting org.locationtech.geomesa.blob.api.maxFileSizeMB=10 will result in a 10MB maxFileSize.