hauser

hauser is a service to download Fullstory Data Export files and load them into storage. Currently, Data Export files can be saved to local disk, S3, Redshift, GCS, and BigQuery. (Others are easy to add -- pull requests welcome.)

hauser is designed to run continuously so that it can update your chosen data store as new data becomes available. VMs are a good option for running hauser continuously.

SQL recipes for Data Export analysis are in the Data Export Cookbook.

Quick Start

1. Download the latest release binary
2. Download the included example-config.toml file and customize it for your environment, including your Fullstory API key, warehouse host, and credentials. AWS credentials (for S3) come from your local environment.
3. Assuming the binary and updated config are in the current directory, run:

./hauser -c myconfig.toml

Important Configuration Fields

FsApiToken

Your Fullstory API Token. It can also be set through the FULLSTORY_API_TOKEN environment variable.

ExportDuration

Determines the time range for each export which ultimately determines the size of each exported file. The size of this file will be based on the amount of traffic that your Fullstory account records within the specified duration. The default is 1 hour, but if a different file size is desirable, this can be modified to meet your specific needs. The max duration is 24 hours.

ExportDelay

Determines how long to wait before creating an export. This delay is necessary because there is some latency between when an event is recorded and when it is available and complete. 24 hours is the default, but is also fairly conservative. In many cases this can be reduced safely to 3 hours, but note that events from "swan songs" may not be available.

StartTime

Determines the datetime that should be used a starting point for creating the exports. This value is only used when starting with a fresh database/storage instance (i.e. hauser hasn't been used with the specified warehouse). If you would like to export all the data that is currently within retention, set this to the date of the oldest possible session start. For example, if your Fullstory account has 3 months of retention, and today is October 20th, 2020, set StartTime to 2020-7-20T00:00:00Z to include the oldest data for your account.

How It Works

hauser will use Fullstory's segment export API to create exports of the everyone segment. When the export has completed (see Operations API), hauser will download the file, perform some light transformation for custom user vars , and load the data into the warehouse.

hauser will continue to this process of "create export -> download -> upload" until it reaches the most "live" data (i.e. "Now - ExportDelay - ExportDuration"). At this point, hauser will perform the process approximately every ExportDuration.

hauser can safely be stopped and restarted. When using a database, it uses the SyncTable to keep track of what export files have been processed, and will restart from the last known sync point. For a StorageOnly process, it will create a file called .sync.hauser that will be used as a checkpoint.

Amazon Web Services Notes

Currently, only S3 and Redshift are supported for this provider.

To use AWS, set the Provider config option to aws.

Each export file is saved locally to the temp directory before it is moved to S3. If not StorageOnly, the S3 copy is then loaded into Redshift through the copy command, and the S3 file is removed.

Details about Redshift configuration can be found in the Redshift Guide.

Google Cloud Notes

Currently, only GCS and BigQuery are supported for this provider.

To use Google Cloud, set the Provider config option to gcp.

Each export file is saved locally to the temp directory before it is moved to GCS. If not StorageOnly, the GCS file is then loaded into BigQuery through the gRPC client API equivalent of the bq load command, and the GCS file is removed.

The BigQuery ExportTable is expected to be a date partitioned table. The default values ExportTable = "fs_export" and SyncTable = "fs_sync" will work, but feel free to customize the fs_sync and fs_export names. If the SyncTable and ExportTable do not already exist in BigQuery, they will be created.

Local Storage Notes

To only store downloaded export files locally, set the Provider option to local. This will save exports to a local folder specified by SaveDir. If UseStartTime is set to true, only exports since StartTime will be downloaded (as opposed to all available exports). Exports can be saved in JSON format (by setting SaveAsJson to true) or in CSV format.

Table Schema Changes

On startup, hauser will ensure that the export table listed in the config contains columns for all export fields. If hauser detects columns for fields don't exist, it will append columns for those fields to the export table. It uses this schema information, which it acquires once on startup, to intelligently build CSV files and deal with schema alterations to the export table. If schema changes are made, hauser will have to be restarted so it is aware of the updated export table schema.

If the export table contains columns that aren't part of the export, hauser will insert null values for those columns when it inserts new records. Note: In order for hauser to successfully insert records, any added columns must be nullable.

If Fullstory adds fields to the export, a new version of hauser will need to be downloaded to pick up the new fields. If a backfill of the fields is desired, you can create a one-off export of just the new fields by using the segment export API.

Working with Custom Vars

For convenience, any custom user vars in your data are stored in a json map in the CustomVars column. In Redshift, they can be easily accessed using the JSON_EXTRACT_PATH_TEXT function.

For example:

SELECT COUNT(*)
FROM myexport
WHERE JSON_EXTRACT_PATH_TEXT(CustomVars, 'acct_adminDisabled_bool') = 'false';

Using hauser with Docker

For platforms that support Docker, you can download an image from docker hub that lets you run hauser:

# Download image
docker pull fullstorydev/hauser:latest

# Assumes that your config.toml is in the current directory
docker run --rm \
  -v $(pwd)/config.toml:/config.toml \
  fullstorydev/hauser:latest -c /config.toml

To include Hauser in a custom Docker container, add the following to your Dockerfile. Note that the example below assumes the desired image is linux.

FROM fullstorydev/hauser:latest as builder

# Custom docker config ...
FROM alpine:latest
COPY --from=builder /bin/hauser /usr/bin/hauser

# Entry point ...

Or you can download the release directly:

RUN curl -L >hauser.tar.gz https://github.com/fullstorydev/hauser/releases/download/v${HAUSER_VERSION}/hauser_${HAUSER_VERSION}_linux_x86_64.tar.gz \
  && tar -xzvf hauser.tar.gz -C /usr/bin \
  && rm hauser.tar.gz

The ${HAUSER_VERSION} can be provided at build time with the docker ARG command. You can find the latest version of Hauser on the releases page. For a more complete example of using Hauser with docker, see this recipe.

Building from source

• Make sure you have installed Go 1.11 or higher.
• OPTIONAL: Set a custom GOPATH.
• Build it...
  • To compile for use on your local machine: go get github.com/fullstorydev/hauser
  • To cross-compile for deployment on a VM: GOOS=<linux> GOARCH=<amd64> go get github.com/fullstorydev/hauser
    • Type go version in the VM's command line to find its GOOS and GOARCH values.
    • Example (Amazon EC2 Linux): go1.11.5 linux/amd64 is GOOS=linux GOARCH=amd64
    • The list of valid GOOS and GOARCH values can be found here.
• Copy the included example-config.toml file and customize it for your environment, including your Fullstory API key, warehouse host, and credentials. AWS credentials (for S3) come from your local environment.
• Run it...
  • NOTE: go get downloads and installs the hauser package in your GOPATH, not the local directory in which you call the command.
  • If you did NOT set a custom GOPATH...
    • Linux & Mac: $HOME/go/bin/hauser -c <your updated config file>
    • Windows: %USERPROFILE%\go\bin\hauser -c <your updated config file>
  • If you DID set a custom GOPATH...
    • Linux & Mac: $GOPATH/bin/hauser -c <your updated config file>
    • Windows: $GOPATH\bin\hauser -c <your updated config file>

Developing

Easily format your commits by adding git pre-commit hook:

ln -s ../../pre-commit.sh .git/hooks/pre-commit