Integration / Apache NiFi Interview Questions
What is a Processor in Apache NiFi and what are the main processor categories?
A Processor is the fundamental building block of a NiFi data flow. Each processor performs one specific operation on FlowFiles: fetching from a source, transforming content, routing on attributes, writing to a destination, and so on. Processors are connected via Connections to form a directed dataflow graph on the canvas.
NiFi ships with hundreds of built-in processors in functional categories:
Data Ingestion: GetFile, GetHTTP, GetSFTP, ListenHTTP, ConsumerKafka, GetSQS — pull or receive data from external sources.
Data Egress: PutFile, PublishKafka, PutS3Object, PostHTTP, PutEmail, PutSFTP — write or send data to destinations.
Routing and Mediation: RouteOnAttribute, RouteOnContent, SplitText, SplitJSON, MergeContent — split, merge, or direct FlowFiles to different paths.
Database Interaction: ExecuteSQL, PutDatabaseRecord, QueryDatabaseTable, GenerateTableFetch — read from and write to JDBC-accessible databases.
Attribute Extraction: UpdateAttribute, EvaluateJsonPath, ExtractText, LookupRecord — read or modify FlowFile attributes.
Transformation: ConvertRecord, JoltTransformJSON, TransformXml, ReplaceText — change format or content of payloads.
Custom processors can be developed in Java, packaged as NAR (NiFi Archive) files, and deployed to NiFi's lib directory.
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