# Kafka Connect TombstoneHandler SMT Usage Reference for Confluent Cloud The following provides usage information for the Confluent Single Message Transformation (SMT) `io.confluent.connect.transforms.TombstoneHandler`. ## Description Manage tombstone records. A tombstone record is defined as a record with the entire value field being null, whether or not it has ValueSchema. ## Installation This transformation is developed by Confluent and does not ship by default with Kafka or Confluent Cloud. You can install this transformation using the [confluent connect plugin install](https://docs.confluent.io/confluent-cli/current/command-reference/connect/plugin/confluent_connect_plugin_install.html) command: ```properties confluent connect plugin install confluentinc/connect-transforms:latest ``` ## Examples The configuration snippets below show how to use and configure the `Tombstone` SMT. The connector uses the default (warn) behavior to handle tombstone records, which ignores the tombstone silently and writes a WARN message to log. ```json "transforms": "tombstoneHandlerExample", "transforms.tombstoneHandlerExample.type": "io.confluent.connect.transforms.TombstoneHandler" ``` The connector uses the ignore behavior to handle tombstone records, which ignores the tombstone silently and writes a DEBUG message to log. ```json "transforms.tombstoneHandlerExample.type": "io.confluent.connect.transforms.TombstoneHandler", "transforms.tombstoneHandlerExample.behavior": "ignore", ``` The connector uses the fail behavior to handle tombstone records, which fails the execution, throws a `DataException`, and writes a DEBUG message to log. ```json "transforms.tombstoneHandlerExample.type": "io.confluent.connect.transforms.TombstoneHandler", "transforms.tombstoneHandlerExample.behavior": "fail" ``` ## Properties | Name | Description | Type | Default | Valid Values | Importance | |------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|--------|-----------|----------------------|--------------| | `behavior` | If set to `ignore`, the tombstone
record is ignored silently, with a DEBUG message written to log.
If set to `warn`, the tombstone record is ignored silently,
with a WARN message written to log. If set to `fail`, the execution
fails, a `DataException` is thrown, and a DEBUG message is
written to log. | string | warn | [ignore, warn, fail] | medium | ## Predicates Transformations can be configured with *predicates* so that the transformation is applied only to records which satisfy a condition. You can use predicates in a transformation chain and, when combined with the [Kafka Connect Filter (Kafka) SMT Usage Reference for Confluent Cloud](filter-ak.md#ak-filter), predicates can conditionally filter out specific records. For details and examples, see [Predicates](filter-ak.md#predicates).