Parsers are pluggable components that transform raw data (textual or raw bytes) into JSON messages suitable for downstream enrichment and indexing. Data flows through the parser bolt via Kafka and into the enrichments topology in Storm. Errors are collected with the context of the error (for example stacktrace) and the original message causing the error and sent to an error queue. Invalid messages as determined by global validation functions are also treated as errors and sent to an error queue.

HCP supports two types of parsers: Java and general purpose. Each of these parsers plus the parser configuration are described in the following sections.