Kafka Desktop Client

The Kafka Desktop Client is a cross-platform desktop application that consumes, analyzes, and inspects Kafka messages in json format. Using a flexible set of tools, you can quickly and easily browse and filter messages, gather statistics, and scan and match traffic from different topics. To begin using the Kafka Desktop Client:

1. Download the latest version of the client for your operating system.
2. Unzip the file and run KafkaDesktopClient executable

Features

Inspector: View and filter Kafka messages

On the Inspector tab, you can consume messages from kafka topics and browse them.

To view and filter messages:

1. Select the number of messages that you want to see.
2. Specify the Kafka topic.
3. Click Run to begin collecting messages in the buffer.
4. After collecting messages, specify a jq filter that you want to apply.
5. Click the Filter button to apply this filter.
6. To see the details for an individual message, click on the message.

In the screenshot below, the filter select(.company == "STREZZO") is applied and it will show messages that match the company name.

Statistics: View filtered statistics

On the Statistic tab, you can create filters to gather specific statistics by using jq filters. For more information on the jq filters that you can use, see the JQ filter support section.

1. Select the number of messages that you want limit to. If you select 0, messages will be consumed until you click Stop.
2. Select the kafka topic.
3. Optionally, create a prefilter if you want to limit the results that are shown.
4. In the Filter section, create the jq filters for the statistic you want to see.

In the screenshot below, there is a total count filtering by operating systems, for example, select(.os == "WIN")

Traffic Match: match traffic from two topics

In the Traffic Match tab, you can monitor two Kafka topics simultaneously and search for matching messages based on specified filters.

The screenshot below lists all message of topic1 and topic2 matched if their ids are equal. Double-clicking on a message will bring up a window showing all matched message with the same ._id.

Install

Version	Linux	macOS	Windows
2.3	Ubuntu	catalina, mojave	Windows 10

Changelog

Version	Description
2.3	Initial opensource release

JQ filter support

A list of all unit tests can be found here. A few examples are listed below.

# Field access
.company
.team.members

# Array access
.team.members[0]
.team.members[0].name   # from json object team, first index of array memebrs, show name key

# Piping intermediary result to next filter
.team | .members[0] | .name

# Regex(<expr no quotes>), return matched strings, otherwise empty
# Can be applied to any object (not just string)
regex(page.*www.yahoo.com)

# Contains(<string no quotes>), return bool if string is found otherwise false
# Can be applied to any object (not just string)
contains(msn.com)    

# Select
select(.errno != null)      # is not null
select(.errno == null)      # is null
select(.country == "US") | .company

select(.team.members[1])         # members[1] not null, same as select(.team.members[1] != null)
select(.team.members[1] | contains(Fan))

# Other examples
select(regex(page.*www.yahoo.com)) | .company
select(.country == "US" and .team.members[0].name == "Bob")

# Comparison
select(.age > 90)    
select(.age != 25)    # equivalent to select(.age == 25 | not) 
select(.number >= 500 and .age > 90)

Build from source

In short

On all OSs, need to install a package manager called vcpkg, which will fetch the required libraries and compile them locally. Windows/Macos are all handled by vcpkg but for linux there is a separate (simple) step for the GUI library. Below are the IDEs which were tested and working correctly: Linux/macos: Visual Studio Code + Cmake extension Windows: Visual Studio Community

Instructions

# get the package manager
cd /opt
git clone [email protected]:microsoft/vcpkg.git
cd vcpkg
./bootstrap.sh # linux, macos
bootstrap.bat  # windows

# Kafka libs
vcpkg install "librdkafka[zlib]"  # linux, macos 
vcpkg install librdkafka[zlib]  # windows 
vcpkg install cppkafka

# Json libs
vcpkg install rapidjson
vcpkg install nlohmann-json

# next line: linux only
./vcpkg.sh install ncurses 

# Misc
vcpkg install xlnt

# Cross-platform GUI libs wxWidgets
# Next line: only for windows and macos
vcpkg install wxwidgets

# Nxt lines: only for Linux:
# [ref link](https://www.binarytides.com/install-wxwidgets-ubuntu/)
# Go to wxwidgets.org and download source files (eg. https://www.wxwidgets.org/downloads/)
# Extract the files to a directory and open a shell inside the directory
sudo apt-get install libgtk-3-dev build-essential checkinstall
mkdir gtk-build
cd gtk-build/
../configure --disable-shared --enable-unicode
make
sudo checkinstall

Linux

mkdir build
cd build
cmake ../ "-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release" "-DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=/opt/vcpkg/scripts/buildsystems/vcpkg.cmake"
cmake --build . --parallel 8

MacOS

mkdir build
cd build
cmake .. "-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release" "-DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=/opt/vcpkg/scripts/buildsystems/vcpkg.cmake" "-DwxWidgets_CONFIG_EXECUTABLE=/opt/vcpkg/installed/x64-osx/tools/wxwidgets/wx-config"
cmake --build . --parallel 8

Win10

With Visual Studio, open .sln file then Build->Build Solution.

When building on Win10, you might need to make an additional modification to rdkafka.h library from vcpkg\installed\x86-windows\include\librdkafka\rdkafka.h, replace the following:

typedef SSIZE_T ssize_t;

with

#ifndef _SSIZE_T
typedef SSIZE_T ssize_t;
#endif

Constributing

All contributions are welcome.

License

Apache 2.0