kcat - Man Page
generic producer and consumer for Apache Kafka
Examples (TL;DR)
Consume messages starting with the newest offset:
kcat -C -t topic -b brokersConsume messages starting with the oldest offset and exit after the last message is received:
kcat -C -t topic -b brokers -o beginning -eConsume messages as a Kafka consumer group:
kcat -G group_id topic -b brokersPublish message by reading from
stdin:echo message | kcat -P -t topic -b brokersPublish messages by reading from a file:
kcat -P -t topic -b brokers path/to/fileList metadata for all topics and brokers:
kcat -L -b brokersList metadata for a specific topic:
kcat -L -t topic -b brokersGet offset for a topic/partition for a specific point in time:
kcat -Q -t topic:partition:unix_timestamp -b brokers
Synopsis
| kcat | -C | -P | -L -t topic [-p partition] -b brokers [, ...] [-D delim] [-K delim] [-c cnt] [-X list] [-X prop=val] [-X dump] [-d dbg [, ...]] [-q] [-v] [-Z] [specific options] |
| kcat | -C [generic options] [-o offset] [-e] [-O] [-u] [-J] [-f fmtstr] |
| kcat | -P [generic options] [-z snappy | gzip] [-p -1] [file [...]] |
| kcat | -L [generic options] [-t topic] |
Description
kcat is a generic non-JVM producer and consumer for Apache Kafka 0.8, think of it as a netcat for Kafka.
In producer mode ( -P ), kcat reads messages from stdin, delimited with a configurable delimeter and produces them to the provided Kafka cluster, topic and partition. In consumer mode ( -C ), kcat reads messages from a topic and partition and prints them to stdout using the configured message delimiter.
If neither -P or -C are specified kcat attempts to figure out the mode automatically based on stdin/stdout tty types.
kcat also features a metadata list mode ( -L ), to display the current state of the Kafka cluster and its topics and partitions.
See Also
For a more extensive help and some simple examples, run kcat with -h flag.