Windowing
Interactive Syntax Reference
WindowingApache Beam Cheatsheet: Windowing
Recommended reading: 4 minsCopy-paste ready Python code snippets
Core Architecture Overview
Group unbounded streaming data into logical time intervals.
beam.WindowInto()
returns: PCollectionPurpose & Description
Binds PCollection elements into time-based logical windows.
Syntax Signature
beam.WindowInto(windowfn, *args, **kwargs)Executable Example
import apache_beam as beam
from apache_beam.transforms.window import FixedWindows
# Group records into 60-second fixed intervals
windowed = stream | beam.WindowInto(FixedWindows(60))Used In
Aggregating metrics in real-time streaming pipelines.
Related Methods
FixedWindows(), SlidingWindows(), Sessions()
Pro Tip
Windowing divides unbounded streams into bounded slices, which is mandatory before using Combine or GroupByKey.
Windowing Types Comparison
Review typical real-world properties of temporal window structures.
| Window Type | Overlapping | Alignment | Use Case |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fixed Windows | No | Aligned globally | Hourly/daily summaries |
| Sliding Windows | Yes | Aligned globally | 10-minute moving average every 1 minute |
| Session Windows | No | Unaligned (per-key) | User behavior tracking (idle timeout) |
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