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Scripting Bacalhau with Python

Bacalhau allows you to easily execute batch jobs via the CLI. But sometimes you need to do more than that. You might need to execute a script that requires user input, or you might need to execute a script that requires a lot of parameters. In any case, you probably want to execute your jobs in a repeatable manner.

This example demonstrates a simple Python script that is able to orchestrate the execution of lots of jobs in a repeatable manner.

Prerequisite

To get started, you need to install the Bacalhau client, see more information here

Executing Bacalhau Jobs with Python Scripts

To demonstrate this example, I will use the data generated from an Ethereum example. This produced a list of hashes that I will iterate over and execute a job for each one.

#write following to the file hashes.txt
bafybeihvtzberlxrsz4lvzrzvpbanujmab3hr5okhxtbgv2zvonqos2l3i
bafybeifb25fgxrzu45lsc47gldttomycqcsao22xa2gtk2ijbsa5muzegq
bafybeig4wwwhs63ly6wbehwd7tydjjtnw425yvi2tlzt3aii3pfcj6hvoq
bafybeievpb5q372q3w5fsezflij3wlpx6thdliz5xowimunoqushn3cwka
bafybeih6te26iwf5kzzby2wqp67m7a5pmwilwzaciii3zipvhy64utikre
bafybeicjd4545xph6rcyoc74wvzxyaz2vftapap64iqsp5ky6nz3f5yndm

Now let's create a file called bacalhau.py. The script below automates the submission, monitoring, and retrieval of results for multiple Bacalhau jobs in parallel. It is designed to be used in a scenario where there are multiple hash files, each representing a job, and the script manages the execution of these jobs using Bacalhau commands.

# write following to the file bacalhau.py
import json, glob, os, multiprocessing, shutil, subprocess, tempfile, time

# checkStatusOfJob checks the status of a Bacalhau job
def checkStatusOfJob(job_id: str) -> str:
    assert len(job_id) > 0
    p = subprocess.run(
        ["bacalhau", "list", "--output", "json", "--id-filter", job_id],
        stdout=subprocess.PIPE,
        stderr=subprocess.PIPE,
        text=True,
    )
    r = parseJobStatus(p.stdout)
    if r == "":
        print("job status is empty! %s" % job_id)
    elif r == "Completed":
        print("job completed: %s" % job_id)
    else:
        print("job not completed: %s - %s" % (job_id, r))

    return r


# submitJob submits a job to the Bacalhau network
def submitJob(cid: str) -> str:
    assert len(cid) > 0
    p = subprocess.run(
        [
            "bacalhau",
            "docker",
            "run",
            "--id-only",
            "--wait=false",
            "--input",
            "ipfs://" + cid + ":/inputs/data.tar.gz",
            "ghcr.io/bacalhau-project/examples/blockchain-etl:0.0.6",
        ],
        stdout=subprocess.PIPE,
        stderr=subprocess.PIPE,
        text=True,
    )
    if p.returncode != 0:
        print("failed (%d) job: %s" % (p.returncode, p.stdout))
    job_id = p.stdout.strip()
    print("job submitted: %s" % job_id)

    return job_id


# getResultsFromJob gets the results from a Bacalhau job
def getResultsFromJob(job_id: str) -> str:
    assert len(job_id) > 0
    temp_dir = tempfile.mkdtemp()
    print("getting results for job: %s" % job_id)
    for i in range(0, 5): # try 5 times
        p = subprocess.run(
            [
                "bacalhau",
                "get",
                "--output-dir",
                temp_dir,
                job_id,
            ],
            stdout=subprocess.PIPE,
            stderr=subprocess.PIPE,
            text=True,
        )
        if p.returncode == 0:
            break
        else:
            print("failed (exit %d) to get job: %s" % (p.returncode, p.stdout))

    return temp_dir


# parseJobStatus parses the status of a Bacalhau job
def parseJobStatus(result: str) -> str:
    if len(result) == 0:
        return ""
    r = json.loads(result)
    if len(r) > 0:
        return r[0]["State"]["State"]
    return ""


# parseHashes splits lines from a text file into a list
def parseHashes(filename: str) -> list:
    assert os.path.exists(filename)
    with open(filename, "r") as f:
        hashes = f.read().splitlines()
    return hashes


def main(file: str, num_files: int = -1):
    # Use multiprocessing to work in parallel
    count = multiprocessing.cpu_count()
    with multiprocessing.Pool(processes=count) as pool:
        hashes = parseHashes(file)[:num_files]
        print("submitting %d jobs" % len(hashes))
        job_ids = pool.map(submitJob, hashes)
        assert len(job_ids) == len(hashes)

        print("waiting for jobs to complete...")
        while True:
            job_statuses = pool.map(checkStatusOfJob, job_ids)
            total_finished = sum(map(lambda x: x == "Completed", job_statuses))
            if total_finished >= len(job_ids):
                break
            print("%d/%d jobs completed" % (total_finished, len(job_ids)))
            time.sleep(2)

        print("all jobs completed, saving results...")
        results = pool.map(getResultsFromJob, job_ids)
        print("finished saving results")

        # Do something with the results
        shutil.rmtree("results", ignore_errors=True)
        os.makedirs("results", exist_ok=True)
        for r in results:
            path = os.path.join(r, "outputs", "*.csv")
            csv_file = glob.glob(path)
            for f in csv_file:
                print("moving %s to results" % f)
                shutil.move(f, "results")

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main("hashes.txt", 10)

This code has a few interesting features:

Change the value in the main call (main("hashes.txt", 10)) to change the number of jobs to execute.
Because all jobs are complete at different times, there's a loop to check that all jobs have been completed before downloading the results. If you don't do this, you'll likely see an error when trying to download the results. The while True loop is used to monitor the status of jobs and wait for them to complete.
When downloading the results, the IPFS get often times out, so I wrapped that in a loop. The for i in range(0, 5) loop in the getResultsFromJob function involves retrying the bacalhau job get operation if it fails to complete successfully.

Let's run it!

python3 bacalhau.py

Hopefully, the results directory contains all the combined results from the jobs we just executed. Here's we're expecting to see CSV files:

ls results

transactions_00000000_00049999.csv  transactions_00150000_00199999.csv
transactions_00050000_00099999.csv  transactions_00200000_00249999.csv
transactions_00100000_00149999.csv  transactions_00250000_00299999.csv

Success! We've now executed a bunch of jobs in parallel using Python. This is a great way to execute lots of jobs in a repeatable manner. You can alter the file above for your purposes.

Next Steps

You might also be interested in the following examples:

Analysing Data with Python Pandas

Support

If you have questions or need support or guidance, please reach out to the Bacalhau team via Slack (#general channel).