README.md

Using Kafka to Track Cryptocurrency Price Trends

This repo polls Coinbase API for various cryptocurrency prices and uses Kafka to calculate moving average prices and stores the data in a timeseries database, QuestDB, for further analysis.

The project was inspired by "Using Kafka Streams to Analyze Live Trading Activity for Crypto Exchanges" talk by Ludvig Sandman and Bruce Zulu at Kafka Summit London 2019. Python code to poll Coinbase API was modified from fdallac/kafka-crypto-data-stream.

Prerequisites

• Docker (min of 4GB memory)
• Python 3.7+

Structure

• docker-compose: holds docker-compose file to start Kafka (zookeeper, broker, kafka connect), QuestDB, and JSON file to initialize Kafka Connect
• docker: Dockerfile to build Kafka Connect image (if you wish to build locally or extend)
• Python files:
  • config.py: specify polling frequency, cryptocurrency
  • getData.py: polls Coinbase API and publishes records to Kafka
  • kafkaHelper.py: wrapper around kafka-python lib
  • movingAverage.py: calculates a moving average per cryptocurrency

Quickstart

Kafka Setup

Start up the Kafka/QuestDB stack:

cd docker-compose
docker compose up

Wait until all the components are healthy (look at Kafka Connect container logs).

Post kafka-postgres-btc sink schema to Kafka Connect:

curl -X POST -H "Accept:application/json" -H "Content-Type:application/json" --data @questdb-sink-btc.json http://localhost:8083/connectors

Python Setup

Install the necessary packages:

pip install -r requirements.txt

Run the script to poll Coinbase API:

python getData.py

(Optional): calculate moving averages

python movingAverage.py