Kafka CLI kaf

Kafka is super popular and powerful data streaming platform but I’m surprised by lack of easy cli tool.

To find out version, there is no such thing as kafka --version you do:

$ find /opt/kafka/libs/ -name kafka_\* | head -1
/opt/kafka/libs/kafka_2.13-2.4.0-test-sources.jar

where 2.13 is scala version and 2.4.0 is kafka version.

One tool that I played with is lovely called kaf, “Modern CLI for Kafka”.

to list topics, you do:

sudo bin/kafka-topics.sh --list --bootstrap-server localhost:9092

whereas with kaf you do:

$ kaf topics

to consume on console you do:

sudo bin/kafka-console-consumer.sh --bootstrap-server localhost:9092 --topic test_topic

whereas with kaf you do:

kaf consume test_topic

just be able to omit –bootstrap-server etc makes you type less thus productive ;)

go get github.com/birdayz/kaf/cmd/kaf

set auto-complete for zsh

echo 'source <(kaf completion zsh)' >> ~/.zshrc

for shell

echo 'source <(kaf completion bash)' >> ~/.bashrc

ADD and SELECT cluster ADD config for local

kaf config add-cluster local -b localhost:9092

This will create config file here:

~/.kaf/config

Then you can SELECT to use this config

kaf config select-cluster 
Use the arrow keys to navigate: ↓ ↑ → ← 
? Select cluster: 
  ▸ local
    prod-kafka
    dev-kafka

LIST Kafka node

kaf node ls

LIST Kafka topics

kaf topics

Describe a topic

kaf topic describe ${topic}

List groups

kaf groups

Describe a group

You can see offset etc.

kaf group describe ${group}

LIST Kafka send message

echo '{"a": 123}' | kaf produce test_topic

LIST Kafka consume message

kaf consume test_topic --offset oldest|newest

Easy to install, easy to use, less typing and cluster def in yaml config. So why not use this!

Cheers!

January 25, 2020