The feature server is an HTTP endpoint that serves features with JSON I/O. This enables users to write + read features from Feast online stores using any programming language that can make HTTP requests.
CLI
There is a CLI command that starts the server: feast serve. By default, Feast uses port 6566; the port be overridden by a --port flag.
Deploying as a service
One can also deploy a feature server by building a docker image that bundles in the project's feature_store.yaml. See helm chart for example.
A remote feature server on AWS Lambda is available. A remote feature server on GCP Cloud Run is currently being developed.
Example
Initializing a feature server
Here's the local feature server usage example with the local template:
$ feast init feature_repo
Creating a new Feast repository in /home/tsotne/feast/feature_repo.
$ cd feature_repo
$ feast apply
Registered entity driver_id
Registered feature view driver_hourly_stats
Deploying infrastructure for driver_hourly_stats
$ feast materialize-incremental $(date +%Y-%m-%d)
Materializing 1 feature views to 2021-09-09 17:00:00-07:00 into the sqlite online store.
driver_hourly_stats from 2021-09-09 16:51:08-07:00 to 2021-09-09 17:00:00-07:00:
100%|████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████| 5/5 [00:00<00:00, 295.24it/s]
$ feast serve
This is an experimental feature. It's intended for early testing and feedback, and could change without warnings in future releases.
INFO: Started server process [8889]
09/10/2021 10:42:11 AM INFO:Started server process [8889]
INFO: Waiting for application startup.
09/10/2021 10:42:11 AM INFO:Waiting for application startup.
INFO: Application startup complete.
09/10/2021 10:42:11 AM INFO:Application startup complete.
INFO: Uvicorn running on http://127.0.0.1:6566 (Press CTRL+C to quit)
09/10/2021 10:42:11 AM INFO:Uvicorn running on http://127.0.0.1:6566 (Press CTRL+C to quit)
Retrieving features from the online store
After the server starts, we can execute cURL commands from another terminal tab: