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kafkacat¶

In this tutorial, you will run a kafkacat client application that produces messages to and consumes messages from an Apache Kafka® cluster.

After you run the tutorial, view the provided source code and use it as a reference to develop your own Kafka client application.

Prerequisites¶

Client¶

kafkacat installed on your machine. You must build kafkacat from the latest master branch to get the -F functionality that makes it easy to pass in the configuration to your Confluent Cloud configuration file.

Kafka Cluster¶

You can use this tutorial with a Kafka cluster in any environment:
- In Confluent Cloud
- On your local host
- Any remote Kafka cluster
If you are running on Confluent Cloud, you must have access to a Confluent Cloud cluster
- The first 20 users to sign up for Confluent Cloud and use promo code C50INTEG will receive an additional $50 free usage (details)

Setup¶

Clone the confluentinc/examples GitHub repository and check out the 5.5.15-post branch.

git clone https://github.com/confluentinc/examples
cd examples
git checkout 5.5.15-post

Change directory to the example for kafkacat.
```
cd clients/cloud/kafkacat/
```
Create a local file (for example, at $HOME/.confluent/java.config) with configuration parameters to connect to your Kafka cluster. Starting with one of the templates below, customize the file with connection information to your cluster. Substitute your values for {{ BROKER_ENDPOINT }}, {{CLUSTER_API_KEY }}, and {{ CLUSTER_API_SECRET }} (see Connecting Clients to Confluent Cloud for instructions on how to create or find those values).
- Template configuration file for Confluent Cloud
```
# Kafka
bootstrap.servers={{ BROKER_ENDPOINT }}
security.protocol=SASL_SSL
sasl.jaas.config=org.apache.kafka.common.security.plain.PlainLoginModule required username="{{ CLUSTER_API_KEY }}" password="{{ CLUSTER_API_SECRET }}";
ssl.endpoint.identification.algorithm=https
sasl.mechanism=PLAIN
```
- Template configuration file for local host
```
# Kafka
bootstrap.servers=localhost:9092
```

Basic Producer and Consumer¶

In this example, the producer application writes Kafka data to a topic in your Kafka cluster. If the topic does not already exist in your Kafka cluster, the producer application will use the Kafka Admin Client API to create the topic. Each record written to Kafka has a key representing a username (for example, alice) and a value of a count, formatted as json (for example, {"count": 0}). The consumer application reads the same Kafka topic and keeps a rolling sum of the count as it processes each record.

Produce Records¶

Create the topic in Confluent Cloud.

kafka-topics --bootstrap-server `grep "^\s*bootstrap.server" $HOME/.confluent/java.config | tail -1` --command-config $HOME/.confluent/java.config --topic test1 --create --replication-factor 3 --partitions 6

Run kafkacat, writing messages to topic test1, passing in arguments for:
- -F $HOME/.confluent/java.config: configuration file for connecting to the Confluent Cloud cluster
- -K ,: pass key and value, separated by a comma
```
kafkacat -F $HOME/.confluent/java.config -K , -P -t test1
```
Type a few messages, using a , as the separator between the message key and value:
```
alice,{"count":0}
alice,{"count":1}
alice,{"count":2}
```
When you are done, press CTRL-D.
View the producer code.

Consume Records¶

Run kafkacat again, reading messages from topic test, passing in arguments for:

-F $HOME/.confluent/java.config: configuration file for connecting to the Confluent Cloud cluster
-K ,: pass key and value, separated by a comma
-e: exit successfully when last message received

kafkacat -F $HOME/.confluent/java.config -K , -C -t test1 -e

You should see the messages you typed earlier.

% Reading configuration from file $HOME/.confluent/java.config
% Reached end of topic test1 [3] at offset 0
alice,{"count":0}
alice,{"count":1}
alice,{"count":2}
% Reached end of topic test1 [7] at offset 0
% Reached end of topic test1 [4] at offset 0
% Reached end of topic test1 [6] at offset 0
% Reached end of topic test1 [5] at offset 0
% Reached end of topic test1 [1] at offset 0
% Reached end of topic test1 [2] at offset 0
% Reached end of topic test1 [9] at offset 0
% Reached end of topic test1 [10] at offset 0
% Reached end of topic test1 [0] at offset 0
% Reached end of topic test1 [8] at offset 0
% Reached end of topic test1 [11] at offset 3: exiting

View the consumer code.