Kafka Consumer CLI Tutorial
How to consume data from Kafka?
The Kafka console consumer CLI, kafka-console-consumer is used to read data from Kafka and output it to standard output. Make sure you have started Kafka beforehand.
Use CLI commands with appropriate extensions for your platform, e.g., kafka-console-consumer.bat for windows, kafka-console-consumer.sh for Linux
To create a Kafka topic, we need to provide the mandatory parameters:
Find your the Kafka hostname and port e.g.,
localhost:9092Provide the mandatory parameters: topic name
If you need to read historical data, using the
--from-beginningoption.Otherwise, you will only be reading future data
Use the
kafka-console-consumer.shCLI.
Since Kafka v0.10, the consumer is leveraging a Kafka connection string, not Zookeeper. This is due to how consumer offsets are stored. Any tutorial you see using the --zookeeper option should be considered outdated.
Make sure you have followed the Kafka Producer CLI Tutorial to create and send data to a Kafka topic first.
Consuming only the future messages of a Kafka topic
Consuming all historical messages and future ones in a Kafka topic
Use the --from-beginning option
To exit the Kafka console producer, use the keyboard combination Ctrl+C.
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Hello World
My name is Conduktor
I love Kafka
^CProcessed a total of 3 messages (<-- when doing a Ctrl+C to exit)The Kafka Console Consumer will remain opened until you exit it, and will keep on displaying messages to the screen. It assumes all the messages coming in can be deserialized as text (String).
By default, the Kafka Console Consumer does not show the key, or any partition information.
If you do not see any output but you know your Kafka topic has data in it, don't forget to use the --from-beginning option.
The order of messages is not total, it is per partition. As a topic may be created with more than one partition, the order is only guaranteed at the partition level. If you try with only one partition, you will see total ordering.
Here are the common mistakes and caveats with the kafka-console-consumer.sh command:
Messages by default will not display the key or metadata information (see below for how to do it).
When you start a
kafka-console-consumer, unless specifying the--from-beginningoption, only future messages will be displayed and read.If the topic does not exist, the console consumer will automatically create it with default
You can consume multiple topics at a time with a comma-delimited list or a pattern.
If a consumer group id is not specified, the
kafka-console-consumergenerates a random consumer group.If messages do not appear in order, remember that the order is at the partition level, not at the topic level.
--from-beginning
We won't repeat this one enough. To read all historical messages
--formatter
To display messages in a particular format (example below to display keys)
--consumer-property
To pass in any consumer property, such as the allow.auto.create.topics setting
--group
By default a random consumer group ID is chosen, but you can override it with this option. See the demo in the Kafka Consumers in Group CLI Tutorial.
--max-messages
Number of messages to consume before exiting
--partition
If you want to only consume from a specific partition.
By default, the console consumer will show only the value of the Kafka record. Using this command you can show both the key and value.
Using the formatter kafka.tools.DefaultMessageFormatter and using the properties print.timestamp=true print.key=true print.value=true:
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kafka-console-consumer.sh --bootstrap-server localhost:9092 --topic first_topic --formatter kafka.tools.DefaultMessageFormatter --property print.timestamp=true --property print.key=true --property print.value=true --from-beginning
CreateTime:1641810588071 null hello
CreateTime:1641823304170 name Stephane
CreateTime:1641823301294 example key example valueMore properties are available such as:
print.partitionprint.offsetprint.headerskey.separatorline.separatorheaders.separator
Conduktor & Kafka Consumers
You've seen how to perform all these tasks using the CLI, but there's no need to keep using such a painful method.
Conduktor Platform can consume data from Kafka from any specific topic, partitions, or offsets within the partitions; you can consume infinitely or just a defined amount; export the data to CSV; filter the result set; and way more! Try it now!
