Use the Message Browser in Confluent Cloud¶

In Confluent Cloud Console, message browser enables you to view the messages produced to a topic. Use message browser to browse message data across all partitions, seek data from a specific offset or timestamp by partition, and download messages.

Prerequisites: You must have data being produced to a topic or already present in a topic to use message browser.

Inspect a topic¶

Message browser enables you to inspect topic details and browse live streaming messages. If you don’t already have data flowing through the topic, use the built-in produce new message to topic feature to send a message to the topic. You can replay old data that was already produced as long as it hasn’t been compacted or deleted yet.

To browse a live stream of messages and inspect a topic:

Sign in to Confluent Cloud.
If you have more than one environment, select an environment.
Select a cluster.
Select Topics in the navigation menu. The Topics page appears.
Select the topic you want to inspect.
Select Messages. The Messages page displays incoming streaming messages for the topic.
To browse the messages pane use the following features:
- Max results drop down changes the maximum displayed results.
- Auto-refresh toggle pauses and resumes message browser updates. The topic continues to receive any messages produced during a pause, but message browser pauses the display.
- Filter by timestamp, offset, key or value filter results by the specified criteria. Enter a timestamp in Unix epoch format. Enter an offset, key, or any string value to filter by that value.
- From beginning, From timestamp, or From specific time refines message searches.
- Select a row to access the contents of the message. A message detail pane opens. In Message details, select Key, Value, or Headers.

Note

By default, message browser displays newer data at the top of the messages pane.
Filter across any of the available columns.
You can only filter results that are displayed. To add more results to the current display, increase the maximum results, manipulate the start time, or add partitions.
Message browser lacks the capability to show messages that have associated schemas.

Produce a new message to a topic¶

You can produce a new message to a topic using the built-in produce a new message to topic window. To produce messages that refer to a schema, use the Confluent CLI. For more information, see How do I access Confluent CLI and support from Cloud Console?

Click the Actions dropdown and the Produce new message to open the produce message pane.
Enter a valid JSON message in the input box.
Click Produce. Message browser generates a message that appears in the message table.

From start¶

By default, the latest messages are displayed upon first entering message browser. You can instead view the earliest messages from the topic, up to the selected maximum amount.

To view the earliest messages from the topic, select From beginning.

From timestamp or date and time¶

When you seek to a specified time, message browser reads messages from the selected time onwards until the maximum limit of results is reached.

To jump to a timestamp:

To jump to a message timestamp, select From timestamp and enter the timestamp in milliseconds.

Tip

To convert timestamps between human-readable date and time and milliseconds, use a timestamp converter .

To jump to a date and time:

Select the From specific time menu.
Select the default current date and time box to open a calendar.
Select a calendar date. Use the arrows to go forward or back and select a month and day.
Select the time box to adjust the time in hours, minutes, seconds, and AM or PM.
Select Apply.

Download topic messages¶

Use the bulk download option to download the currently displayed set of results.

Considerations:

You can download messages as JSON or CSV.
Filter results to limit what you download.
Use the message shown count indicator to determine how many messages of the current set you would download. For example, if limit maximum results is set to 50 (the default) and you filter 25 messages, you see a message that reads 25 of 50 messages shown. This message indicates that only you will only download 25 messages.

To download messages:

Select the download icon for JSON or CSV. A file that contains the selected messages in the selected format is downloaded into your downloads directory.

Example filenames:

Download messages as JSON_2023-12-05T00_47_57.084Z.json
Download messages as CSV_2023-12-05T16_16_49.815Z.csv

Example JSON content:

[
   {
      "partition": 1,
      "offset": 1511633,
      "timestamp": 1701793270900,
      "timestampType": "CREATE_TIME",
      "key": 90687471,
      "value": {
            "viewtime": 90687471,
            "userid": "User_1",
            "pageid": "Page_60"
      },
      "headers": [
            {
               "key": "task.generation",
               "value": "25"
            },
            {
               "key": "task.id",
               "value": "0"
            },
            {
               "key": "current.iteration",
               "value": "9068747"
            }
      ],
      "exceededFields": null
   },
   {
      "partition": 1,
      "offset": 1511610,
      "timestamp": 1701793199427,
      "timestampType": "CREATE_TIME",
      "key": 90686071,
      "value": {
            "viewtime": 90686071,
            "userid": "User_8",
            "pageid": "Page_60"
      },
      "headers": [
            {
               "key": "task.generation",
               "value": "25"
            },
            {
               "key": "task.id",
               "value": "0"
            },
            {
               "key": "current.iteration",
               "value": "9068607"
            }
      ],
      "exceededFields": null
   }
]