Overview

The Cassandra Thrift API changed between 0.3, 0.4, 0.5 and 0.6; this document explains the 0.6 version.

Cassandra's client API is built entirely on top of Thrift. It should be noted that these documents mention default values, but these are not generated in all of the languages that Thrift supports. Full examples of using Cassandra from Thrift, including setup boilerplate, are found on ThriftExamples. Higher-level clients are linked from ClientOptions.

WARNING: Some SQL/RDBMS terms are used in this documentation for analogy purposes. They should be thought of as just that; analogies. There are few similarities between how data is managed in a traditional RDBMS and Cassandra. Please see DataModel for more information.

Terminology / Abbreviations

Keyspace

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CF

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SCF

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Key

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Column

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Exceptions

NotFoundException

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InvalidRequestException

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UnavailableException

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TimedOutException

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TApplicationException

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AuthenticationException

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AuthorizationException

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Structures

ConsistencyLevel

The ConsistencyLevel is an enum that controls both read and write behavior based on <ReplicationFactor> in your storage-conf.xml. The different consistency levels have different meanings, depending on if you're doing a write or read operation. Note that if W + R > ReplicationFactor, where W is the number of nodes to block for on write, and R the number to block for on reads, you will have strongly consistent behavior; that is, readers will always see the most recent write. Of these, the most interesting is to do QUORUM reads and writes, which gives you consistency while still allowing availability in the face of node failures up to half of ReplicationFactor. Of course if latency is more important than consistency then you can use lower values for either or both.

All discussion of "nodes" here refers to nodes responsible for holding data for the given key; "surrogate" nodes involved in HintedHandoff do not count towards achieving the requested ConsistencyLevel.

Write

Level

Behavior

ZERO

Ensure nothing. A write happens asynchronously in background

ANY

Ensure that the write has been written to at least 1 node, including hinted recipients.

ONE

Ensure that the write has been written to at least 1 node's commit log and memory table before responding to the client.

QUORUM

Ensure that the write has been written to <ReplicationFactor> / 2 + 1 nodes before responding to the client.

ALL

Ensure that the write is written to all <ReplicationFactor> nodes before responding to the client. Any unresponsive nodes will fail the operation.

Read

Level

Behavior

ZERO

Not supported, because it doesn't make sense.

ANY

Not supported. You probably want ONE instead.

ONE

Will return the record returned by the first node to respond. A consistency check is always done in a background thread to fix any consistency issues when ConsistencyLevel.ONE is used. This means subsequent calls will have correct data even if the initial read gets an older value. (This is called read repair.)

QUORUM

Will query all nodes and return the record with the most recent timestamp once it has at least a majority of replicas reported. Again, the remaining replicas will be checked in the background.

ALL

Will query all nodes and return the record with the most recent timestamp once all nodes have replied. Any unresponsive nodes will fail the operation.

Note: Different language toolkits may have their own Consistency Level defaults as well. To ensure the desired Consistency Level, you should always explicitly set the Consistency Level.

ColumnOrSuperColumn

Due to the lack of inheritance in Thrift, Column and SuperColumn structures are aggregated by the ColumnOrSuperColumn structure. This is used wherever either a Column or SuperColumn would normally be expected.

If the underlying column is a Column, it will be contained within the column attribute. If the underlying column is a SuperColumn, it will be contained within the super_column attribute. The two are mutually exclusive - i.e. only one may be populated.

Attribute

Type

Default

Required

Description

column

Column

n/a

N

The Column if this ColumnOrSuperColumn is aggregating a Column.

super_column

SuperColumn

n/a

N

The SuperColumn if this ColumnOrSuperColumn is aggregating a SuperColumn

Column

The Column is a triplet of a name, value and timestamp. As described above, Column names are unique within a row. Timestamps are arbitrary - they can be any integer you specify, however they must be consistent across your application. It is recommended to use a timestamp value with a fine granularity, such as microseconds since the UNIX epoch. See DataModel for more information.

Attribute

Type

Default

Required

Description

name

binary

n/a

Y

The name of the Column.

value

binary

n/a

Y

The value of the Column.

timestamp

i64

n/a

Y

The timestamp of the Column.

SuperColumn

A SuperColumn contains no data itself, but instead stores another level of Columns below the key. See DataModel for more details on what SuperColumns are and how they should be used.

Attribute

Type

Default

Required

Description

name

binary

n/a

Y

The name of the SuperColumn.

columns

list<Column>

n/a

Y

The Columns within the SuperColumn.

ColumnPath

The ColumnPath is the path to a single column in Cassandra. It might make sense to think of ColumnPath and ColumnParent in terms of a directory structure.

Attribute

Type

Default

Required

Description

column_family

string

n/a

Y

The name of the CF of the column being looked up.

super_column

binary

n/a

N

The super column name.

column

binary

n/a

N

The column name.

ColumnParent

The ColumnParent is the path to the parent of a particular set of Columns. It is used when selecting groups of columns from the same ColumnFamily. In directory structure terms, imagine ColumnParent as ColumnPath + '/../'.

Attribute

Type

Default

Required

Description

column_family

string

n/a

Y

The name of the CF of the column being looked up.

super_column

binary

n/a

N

The super column name.

SlicePredicate

A SlicePredicate is similar to a mathematic predicate, which is described as "a property that the elements of a set have in common."

SlicePredicate's in Cassandra are described with either a list of column_names or a SliceRange.

Attribute

Type

Default

Required

Description

column_names

list<binary>

n/a

N

A list of column names to retrieve. This can be used similar to Memcached's "multi-get" feature to fetch N known column names. For instance, if you know you wish to fetch columns 'Joe', 'Jack', and 'Jim' you can pass those column names as a list to fetch all three at once.

slice_range

SliceRange

n/a

N

A SliceRange describing how to range, order, and/or limit the slice.

If column_names is specified, slice_range is ignored.

SliceRange

A SliceRange is a structure that stores basic range, ordering and limit information for a query that will return multiple columns. It could be thought of as Cassandra's version of LIMIT and ORDER BY.

Attribute

Type

Default

Required

Description

start

binary

n/a

Y

The column name to start the slice with. This attribute is not required, though there is no default value, and can be safely set to '', i.e., an empty byte array, to start with the first column name. Otherwise, it must be a valid value under the rules of the Comparator defined for the given ColumnFamily.

finish

binary

n/a

Y

The column name to stop the slice at. This attribute is not required, though there is no default value, and can be safely set to an empty byte array to not stop until count results are seen. Otherwise, it must also be a valid value to the ColumnFamily Comparator.

reversed

bool

false

Y

Whether the results should be ordered in reversed order. Similar to ORDER BY blah DESC in SQL.

count

integer

100

Y

How many columns to return. Similar to LIMIT 100 in SQL. May be arbitrarily large, but Thrift will materialize the whole result into memory before returning it to the client, so be aware that you may be better served by iterating through slices by passing the last value of one call in as the start of the next instead of increasing count arbitrarily large.

KeyRange

A KeyRange is used by get_range_slices to define the range of keys to get the slices for.

The semantics of start keys and tokens are slightly different. Keys are start-inclusive; tokens are start-exclusive. Token ranges may also wrap – that is, the end token may be less than the start one. Thus, a range from keyX to keyX is a one-element range, but a range from tokenY to tokenY is the full ring.

Attribute

Type

Default

Required

Description

start_key

string

n/a

N

The first key in the inclusive KeyRange.

end_key

string

n/a

N

The last key in the inclusive KeyRange.

start_token

string

n/a

N

The first token in the exclusive KeyRange.

end_token

string

n/a

N

The last token in the exclusive KeyRange.

count

i32

100

Y

The total number of keys to permit in the KeyRange.

KeySlice

A KeySlice encapsulates a mapping of a key to the slice of columns for it as returned by the get_range_slices operation. Normally, when slicing a single key, a list<ColumnOrSuperColumn> of the slice would be returned. When slicing multiple or a range of keys, a list<KeySlice> is instead returned so that each slice can be mapped to their key.

Attribute

Type

Default

Required

Description

key

string

n/a

Y

The key for the slice.

columns

list<ColumnOrSuperColumn>

n/a

Y

The columns in the slice.

TokenRange

A structure representing structural information about the cluster provided by the describe utility methods detailed below.

Attribute

Type

Default

Required

Description

start_token

string

n/a

Y

The first token in the TokenRange.

end_token

string

n/a

Y

The last token in the TokenRange.

endpoints

list<string>

n/a

Y

A list of the endpoints (nodes) that replicate data in the TokenRange.

Mutation

A Mutation encapsulates either a column to insert, or a deletion to execute for a key. Like ColumnOrSuperColumn, the two properties are mutually exclusive - you may only set one on a Mutation.

Attribute

Type

Default

Required

Description

column_or_supercolumn

ColumnOrSuperColumn

n/a

N

The column to insert in to the key.

deletion

Deletion

n/a

N

The deletion to execute on the key.

Deletion

A Deletion encapsulates an operation that will delete all columns matching the specified timestamp and predicate. If super_column is specified, the Deletion will operate on columns within the SuperColumn - otherwise it will operate on columns in the top-level of the key.

Attribute

Type

Default

Required

Description

timestamp

i64

n/a

Y

The timestamp of the column(s) to be deleted.

super_column

binary

n/a

N

The super column to delete the column(s) from.

predicate

SlicePredicate

n/a

N

A predicate to match the column(s) to be deleted from the key/super column.

AuthenticationRequest

A structure that encapsulates a request for the connection to be authenticated. The authentication credentials are arbitrary - this structure simply provides a mapping of credential name to credential value.

Attribute

Type

Default

Required

Description

credentials

map<string, string>

n/a

Y

A map of named credentials.

Method calls

login

  • void login(keyspace, auth_request)

Authenticates with the cluster for operations on the specified keyspace using the specified AuthenticationRequest credentials. Throws AuthenticationException if the credentials are invalid or AuthorizationException if the credentials are valid, but not for the specified keyspace.

get

  • ColumnOrSuperColumn get(keyspace, key, column_path, consistency_level)

Get the Column or SuperColumn at the given column_path. If no value is present, NotFoundException is thrown. (This is the only method that can throw an exception under non-failure conditions.)

get_slice

  • list<ColumnOrSuperColumn> get_slice(keyspace, key, column_parent, predicate, consistency_level)

Get the group of columns contained by column_parent (either a ColumnFamily name or a ColumnFamily/SuperColumn name pair) specified by the given SlicePredicate struct.

multiget_slice

  • map<string,list<ColumnOrSuperColumn>> multiget_slice(keyspace, keys, column_parent, predicate, consistency_level)

Retrieves slices for column_parent and predicate on each of the given keys in parallel. Keys are a `list<string> of the keys to get slices for.

This is similar to get_range_slice (Cassandra 0.5) except operating on a set of non-contiguous keys instead of a range of keys.

get_count

  • i32 get_count(keyspace, key, column_parent, consistency_level)

Counts the columns present in column_parent.

The method is not O(1). It takes all the columns from disk to calculate the answer. The only benefit of the method is that you do not need to pull all the columns over Thrift interface to count them.

get_range_slices

  • list<KeySlice> get_range_slices(keyspace, column_parent, predicate, range, consistency_level)

Replaces get_range_slice. Returns a list of slices for the keys within the specified KeyRange. Unlike get_key_range, this applies the given predicate to all keys in the range, not just those with undeleted matching data. This method is only allowed when using an order-preserving partitioner.

insert

  • insert(keyspace, key, column_path, value, timestamp, consistency_level)

Insert a Column consisting of (column_path.column, value, timestamp) at the given column_path.column_family and optional column_path.super_column. Note that column_path.column is here required, since a SuperColumn cannot directly contain binary values – it can only contain sub-Columns.

batch_mutate

  • batch_mutate(keyspace, mutation_map, consistency_level)

Executes the specified mutations on the keyspace. mutation_map is a map<string, map<string, list<Mutation>>>; the outer map maps the key to the inner map, which maps the column family to the Mutation; can be read as: map<key : string, map<column_family : string, list<Mutation>>>. To be more specific, the outer map key is a row key, the inner map key is the column family name.

A Mutation specifies either columns to insert or columns to delete. See Mutation and Deletion above for more details.

remove

  • remove(keyspace, key, column_path, timestamp, consistency_level)

Remove data from the row specified by key at the granularity specified by column_path, and the given timestamp. Note that all the values in column_path besides column_path.column_family are truly optional: you can remove the entire row by just specifying the ColumnFamily, or you can remove a SuperColumn or a single Column by specifying those levels too. Note that the timestamp is needed, so that if the commands are replayed in a different order on different nodes, the same result is produced.

describe_keyspaces

  • set<string> describe_keyspaces()

Gets a list of all the keyspaces configured for the cluster.

describe_cluster_name

  • string describe_cluster_name()

Gets the name of the cluster.

describe_version

  • string describe_version()

Gets the Thrift API version.

describe_ring

  • list<TokenRange> describe_ring(keyspace)

Gets the token ring; a map of ranges to host addresses. Represented as a set of TokenRange instead of a map from range to list of endpoints, because you can't use Thrift structs as map keys: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/THRIFT-162 for the same reason, we can't return a set here, even though order is neither important nor predictable.

describe_keyspace

  • map<string, map<string, string>> describe_keyspace(keyspace)

Gets information about the specified keyspace.

Examples

There are a few examples on this page over here.

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