Confluent CLI Overview

The Confluent command line interface (CLI), confluent, enables developers to manage Confluent Cloud or Confluent Platform.

Built-in autocompletion can help users quickly craft commands. With authentication and machine readable output, confluent supports automated workflows as well.

Important

On Alpine Linux, you cannot directly upgrade from the Confluent CLI versions v2.0.0 through v2.17.1 using the standard confluent update command. Running confluent update on those versions on Alpine Linux will result in an updated confluent client that is incompatible with the operating system.

To upgrade from the v2.0.0 through v2.17.1 versions on Alpine Linux, remove your existing confluent client and re-install using the command: curl -sL --http1.1 https://cnfl.io/cli | sh -s -- latest.

confluent v2.17.2 and later can be updated directly with confluent update on Alpine Linux.

Initial workflow

Take the following steps to get started with the Confluent CLI:

1. Install Confluent CLI.
2. Connect to a Confluent cluster.
   • Connect to a Confluent Cloud cluster.
   • Log into an RBAC-enabled Confluent Platform cluster.
3. Manage Confluent clusters using the Confluent CLI commands.

Tutorials

For step-by-step tutorials using Confluent CLI that show how to produce to and consume from Kafka topics, with and without deserializers, check out the set of Tutorials on Confluent Developer.