KCAT(1)

🌸 NAME 🌸

kcat — generic producer and consumer for Apache Kafka 💖

so like, this is kcat, section 1 of the General Commands Manual (that's the "KCAT(1)" up top, bestie 👑), and it's a generic producer and consumer for Apache Kafka. that's the whole vibe. ✨

🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

okay so here's exactly how you call her, no cap:

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]

like yes, that's a lot of brackets. she contains multitudes. 💅

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

okay so kcat is a generic non-JVM producer and consumer for Apache Kafka 0.8 — think of it as a netcat for Kafka. literally. that's the pitch. 🫶

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. it's giving "type stuff, ship stuff". 📤

In consumer mode ( -C ), kcat reads messages from a topic and partition and prints them to stdout using the configured message delimiter. she's reading the room, and the room is a Kafka topic. 📥

If neither -P nor -C are specified, kcat attempts to figure out the mode automatically based on stdin/stdout tty types. she's psychic like that. 🔮

kcat also features a metadata list mode ( -L ), to display the current state of the Kafka cluster and its topics and partitions. it's the "let me see what's going on in here" mode. 👀

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

For a more extensive help and some simple examples, run kcat with the -h flag. fr fr, that's where the good stuff lives. 💜

this page came to you courtesy of Debian, dated December 09, 2014 — like, vintage, but make it iconic. mwah, go produce something 🍓✨💖