Principle:Fede1024 Rust rdkafka Transaction Lifecycle Management
| Knowledge Sources | |
|---|---|
| Domains | Messaging, Transactions |
| Last Updated | 2026-02-07 19:00 GMT |
Overview
A state machine for managing Kafka transaction boundaries including initialization, begin, commit, and abort operations.
Description
Transaction Lifecycle Management defines the state transitions for exactly-once Kafka processing. A transaction groups multiple produce operations and consumer offset commits into an atomic unit. Either all operations succeed (commit) or all are rolled back (abort).
The lifecycle is: (1) init_transactions registers with the transaction coordinator and fences previous instances, (2) begin_transaction opens a new transaction, (3) messages are produced and offsets sent within the transaction scope, (4) commit_transaction atomically commits all operations, or abort_transaction rolls back.
Error handling is critical: some errors are retriable (retry the whole transaction), some require abort (abort and retry), and some are fatal (producer must be destroyed).
Usage
Use this principle for exactly-once consume-transform-produce pipelines. The full lifecycle must be followed: init once, then loop on begin-produce-commit with error handling and abort on failure.
Theoretical Basis
Transaction state machine:
Pseudo-code logic:
// Abstract algorithm - state machine
producer.init_transactions(timeout) // UNINITIALIZED -> READY
loop {
producer.begin_transaction() // READY -> IN_TRANSACTION
// produce messages within transaction
producer.send(record)
producer.send_offsets_to_transaction(offsets, group_metadata, timeout)
match producer.commit_transaction(timeout) { // IN_TRANSACTION -> READY
Ok(()) => continue,
Err(retriable) => { producer.abort_transaction(timeout); continue; }
Err(fatal) => break,
}
}