Tools for Apache Kafka® installs statistics

Tools for Apache Kafka®

Interact with Apache Kafka® directly in VS Code. Manage clusters, produce and consume messages, and explore topics.

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✨ Key Features

🔍 Visual Cluster Explorer

Browse your Kafka infrastructure in the sidebar:

• 📊 Clusters - Connect to multiple Kafka clusters simultaneously
• 📂 Topics - View, create, and delete topics with real-time updates
• 🖥️ Brokers - Monitor broker health and configuration
• 👥 Consumer Groups - Track consumer lag and group membership
• ⚙️ Configurations - Inspect and manage cluster settings
• 🧬 Schema Registries - Browse subjects and schema versions linked to your clusters

📤 Message Producer

Create producers using simple .kafka files with rich features:

• 🎲 Randomized Data - Generate test data with Faker.js templates
• 🔑 Headers & Keys - Full support for message keys and custom headers
• ⏱️ Scheduled Production - Produce messages at regular intervals (every: 5s, every: 1m)
• 🔁 Batch Production - Send multiple messages at once for load testing
• 🎯 Multiple Producers - Define multiple producers in a single file
• ✅ JSON Schema Validation - Validate value-format: json payloads with inline schema or file(...) reference
• 🧬 Avro & Protobuf - Produce/consume Avro (value-schema inline or file) and Protobuf (value-schema file only)

Example:

PRODUCER user-events
topic: user-activity
every: 3s
key: user-{{string.uuid}}
headers: source=web-app, version=1.0
{
  "userId": "{{string.uuid}}",
  "event": "{{helpers.arrayElement(['login', 'logout', 'purchase'])}}",
  "timestamp": {{$timestamp}},
  "user": {
    "name": "{{person.fullName}}",
    "email": "{{internet.email}}"
  }
}

Value format examples (JSON / Avro / Protobuf):

PRODUCER
topic: json-events
value-format: json
value-schema: {"type":"object","required":["id"],"properties":{"id":{"type":"number"}}}
{"id":1}
###
PRODUCER
topic: avro-events
value-format: avro
value-schema: {"type":"record","name":"UserEvent","fields":[{"name":"id","type":"int"}]}
{"id":1}
###
PRODUCER
topic: protobuf-events
value-format: protobuf(demo.UserCreated)
value-schema: file(./schemas/user-events.proto)
{"id":1,"email":"jane@example.com","active":true}

./schemas/user-events.proto used by protobuf(demo.UserCreated):

syntax = "proto3";

package demo;

message UserCreated {
  int32 id = 1;
  string email = 2;
  bool active = 3;
}

📥 Flexible Consumer

Consume messages with the Message Viewer:

• 📊 Message Viewer - Table view with search, filters, histogram, and CSV export
• 🎯 Targeted Consumption - Consume from specific partitions or offsets
• 💾 Export Data - Export consumed messages to CSV for analysis

Start consuming from:

• Right-click a topic in the explorer
• Use Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P)
• Define consumers in .kafka files

CONSUMER analytics-team
topic: user-events
from: earliest
partitions: 0,1,2

Consume Avro values with schema:

CONSUMER analytics-team
topic: user-events
from: earliest
value-format: avro
value-schema: file(./schemas/user-event.avsc)

Consume Protobuf values with schema file:

CONSUMER analytics-team
topic: protobuf-events
from: earliest
value-format: protobuf(demo.UserCreated)
value-schema: file(./schemas/user-events.proto)

🔐 Security

• 🔒 SASL Authentication - PLAIN, SCRAM-256, SCRAM-512 (Kafka 0.10+)
• 🌐 OAUTHBEARER - OAuth 2.0 authentication with automatic token refresh
• ☁️ AWS MSK IAM - Native AWS IAM authentication for Amazon MSK clusters
• 🛡️ SSL/TLS Support - Secure connections with certificate validation
• 🔑 Secure Storage - Credentials stored in OS keychain (macOS Keychain, Windows Credential Manager, Linux Secret Service)
• 🧪 Development Mode - Optional hostname verification bypass for self-signed certificates

🧬 Schema Registry

Manage Confluent-compatible Schema Registries directly from VS Code:

• 🔗 Reusable Connections - Define named Schema Registry connections independent of clusters
• 🔗 Cluster Linking - Link a registry to one or more Kafka clusters
• 📂 Explorer Browsing - Browse subjects and schema versions in the sidebar
• 📄 Open & Compare - Open schema versions in the editor and diff any two versions side-by-side
• 🔍 Topic Subject Discovery - Automatically discover subjects related to a topic based on TopicNameStrategy, RecordNameStrategy, or TopicRecordNameStrategy
• 🔒 Auth & TLS - Optional basic auth and custom TLS configuration per registry…