<a id="ksqldb-reference-print"></a>

# PRINT statement in ksqlDB for Confluent Platform

## Synopsis

```sql
PRINT topicName [FROM BEGINNING] [INTERVAL | SAMPLE interval] [LIMIT limit]
```

## Description

Print the contents of Kafka topics to the ksqlDB CLI.

The *topicName* is case sensitive. Quote the name if it contains invalid
characters. See [Valid Identifiers](../../reference/sql/lexical-structure.md#ksqldb-lexical-structure-identifiers) for
more information.

The PRINT statement supports the following properties:

| Property              | Description                                                                                                          |
|-----------------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| FROM<br/>BEGINNING    | Print starting with the first message in the topic. If not<br/>specified, PRINT starts with the most recent message. |
| INTERVAL<br/>interval | Print every `interval` th message. The default is 1,<br/>meaning that every message is printed.                      |
| LIMIT<br/>limit       | Stop printing after `limit` messages. The default value<br/>is unlimited, requiring Ctrl+C to terminate the query.   |

## Example

The following statement shows how to print all of the records in a topic
named `rider-locations`, created by:

```sql
CREATE STREAM riderLocations (profileId VARCHAR, latitude DOUBLE, longitude DOUBLE)
WITH (kafka_topic='rider-locations', value_format='json', partitions=1);
```

Note, the topic name has been quoted as it contains the invalid dash
character.

```sql
PRINT 'rider-locations' FROM BEGINNING;
```

ksqlDB attempts to determine the format of the data in the topic and
outputs what it thinks are the key and value formats at the top of the
output.

#### NOTE
Attempting to determine a data format from only the serialized bytes is not
an exact science! For example, it is not possible to distinguish between
serialized `BIGINT` and `DOUBLE` values, because they both occupy eight
bytes. Short strings can also be mistaken for serialized numbers. Where it
appears different records are using different formats ksqlDB will state the
format is `MIXED`.

The output should resemble:

```none
Key format: JSON or KAFKA_STRING
Value format: JSON or KAFKA_STRING
rowtime: 2022/03/18 15:53:22.989 Z, key: 18, value: {"ordertime":1497014222380,"orderid":18,"itemid":"Item_184","address":{"city":"Mountain View","state":"CA","zipcode":94041}}, partition: 0
rowtime: 2022/03/18 15:53:27.192 Z, key: 18, value: {"ordertime":1497014222380,"orderid":18,"itemid":"Item_184","address":{"city":"Mountain View","state":"CA","zipcode":94041}}, partition: 0
^CTopic printing ceased
```

The key format for this topic is `KAFKA_STRING`. However, the
`PRINT` command does not know this and has attempted to determine the
format of the key by inspecting the data. It has determined that the
format may be `KAFKA_STRING`, but it could also be `JSON`.

The value format for this topic is `JSON`. However, the `PRINT`
command has also determined it could be `KAFKA_STRING`. This is
because `JSON` is serialized as text. Hence you could choose to
deserialize this value data as a `KAFKA_STRING` if you wanted to.
However, `JSON` is likely the better option.