Chapter 6. Kafka Bridge

This chapter provides an overview of the AMQ Streams Kafka Bridge and helps you get started using its REST API to interact with AMQ Streams.

6.1. Kafka Bridge overview

You can use the AMQ Streams Kafka Bridge as an interface to make specific types of HTTP requests to the Kafka cluster.

6.1.1. Kafka Bridge interface

The Kafka Bridge provides a RESTful interface that allows HTTP-based clients to interact with a Kafka cluster.  It offers the advantages of a web API connection to AMQ Streams, without the need for client applications to interpret the Kafka protocol.

The API has two main resources — consumers and topics — that are exposed and made accessible through endpoints to interact with consumers and producers in your Kafka cluster. The resources relate only to the Kafka Bridge, not the consumers and producers connected directly to Kafka.

6.1.1.1. HTTP requests

The Kafka Bridge supports HTTP requests to a Kafka cluster, with methods to:

  • Send messages to a topic.
  • Retrieve messages from topics.
  • Retrieve a list of partitions for a topic.
  • Create and delete consumers.
  • Subscribe consumers to topics, so that they start receiving messages from those topics.
  • Retrieve a list of topics that a consumer is subscribed to.
  • Unsubscribe consumers from topics.
  • Assign partitions to consumers.
  • Commit a list of consumer offsets.
  • Seek on a partition, so that a consumer starts receiving messages from the first or last offset position, or a given offset position.

The methods provide JSON responses and HTTP response code error handling. Messages can be sent in JSON or binary formats.

Clients can produce and consume messages without the requirement to use the native Kafka protocol.

Additional resources

6.1.2. Supported clients for the Kafka Bridge

You can use the Kafka Bridge to integrate both internal and external HTTP client applications with your Kafka cluster.

Internal clients
Internal clients are container-based HTTP clients running in the same OpenShift cluster as the Kafka Bridge itself. Internal clients can access the Kafka Bridge on the host and port defined in the KafkaBridge custom resource.
External clients
External clients are HTTP clients running outside the OpenShift cluster in which the Kafka Bridge is deployed and running. External clients can access the Kafka Bridge through an OpenShift Route, a loadbalancer service, or using an Ingress.

HTTP internal and external client integration

Internal and external HTTP producers and consumers exchange data with the Kafka brokers through the Kafka Bridge

6.1.3. Securing the Kafka Bridge

AMQ Streams does not currently provide any encryption, authentication, or authorization for the Kafka Bridge. This means that requests sent from external clients to the Kafka Bridge are:

  • Not encrypted, and must use HTTP rather than HTTPS
  • Sent without authentication

However, you can secure the Kafka Bridge using other methods, such as:

  • OpenShift Network Policies that define which pods can access the Kafka Bridge.
  • Reverse proxies with authentication or authorization, for example, OAuth2 proxies.
  • API Gateways.
  • Ingress or OpenShift Routes with TLS termination.

The Kafka Bridge supports TLS encryption and TLS and SASL authentication when connecting to the Kafka Brokers. Within your OpenShift cluster, you can configure:

  • TLS or SASL-based authentication between the Kafka Bridge and your Kafka cluster
  • A TLS-encrypted connection between the Kafka Bridge and your Kafka cluster.

For more information, see Section 2.5.1, “Configuring the Kafka Bridge”.

You can use ACLs in Kafka brokers to restrict the topics that can be consumed and produced using the Kafka Bridge.

6.1.4. Accessing the Kafka Bridge outside of OpenShift

After deployment, the AMQ Streams Kafka Bridge can only be accessed by applications running in the same OpenShift cluster. These applications use the kafka-bridge-name-bridge-service Service to access the API.

If you want to make the Kafka Bridge accessible to applications running outside of the OpenShift cluster, you can expose it manually by using one of the following features:

  • Services of types LoadBalancer or NodePort
  • Ingress resources
  • OpenShift Routes

If you decide to create Services, use the following labels in the selector to configure the pods to which the service will route the traffic:

  # ...
  selector:
    strimzi.io/cluster: kafka-bridge-name 1
    strimzi.io/kind: KafkaBridge
  #...
1
Name of the Kafka Bridge custom resource in your OpenShift cluster.

6.1.5. Requests to the Kafka Bridge

Specify data formats and HTTP headers to ensure valid requests are submitted to the Kafka Bridge.

6.1.5.1. Content Type headers

API request and response bodies are always encoded as JSON.

  • When performing consumer operations, POST requests must provide the following Content-Type header if there is a non-empty body:

    Content-Type: application/vnd.kafka.v2+json
  • When performing producer operations, POST requests must provide Content-Type headers specifying the embedded data format of the messages produced. This can be either json or binary.

    Embedded data formatContent-Type header

    JSON

    Content-Type: application/vnd.kafka.json.v2+json

    Binary

    Content-Type: application/vnd.kafka.binary.v2+json

The embedded data format is set per consumer, as described in the next section.

The Content-Type must not be set if the POST request has an empty body. An empty body can be used to create a consumer with the default values.

6.1.5.2. Embedded data format

The embedded data format is the format of the Kafka messages that are transmitted, over HTTP, from a producer to a consumer using the Kafka Bridge. Two embedded data formats are supported: JSON and binary.

When creating a consumer using the /consumers/groupid endpoint, the POST request body must specify an embedded data format of either JSON or binary. This is specified in the format field, for example:

{
  "name": "my-consumer",
  "format": "binary", 1
...
}
1
A binary embedded data format.

The embedded data format specified when creating a consumer must match the data format of the Kafka messages it will consume.

If you choose to specify a binary embedded data format, subsequent producer requests must provide the binary data in the request body as Base64-encoded strings. For example, when sending messages using the /topics/topicname endpoint, records.value must be encoded in Base64:

{
  "records": [
    {
      "key": "my-key",
      "value": "ZWR3YXJkdGhldGhyZWVsZWdnZWRjYXQ="
    },
  ]
}

Producer requests must also provide a Content-Type header that corresponds to the embedded data format, for example, Content-Type: application/vnd.kafka.binary.v2+json.

6.1.5.3. Message format

When sending messages using the /topics endpoint, you enter the message payload in the request body, in the records parameter.

The records parameter can contain any of these optional fields:

  • Message headers
  • Message key
  • Message value
  • Destination partition

Example POST request to /topics

curl -X POST \
  http://localhost:8080/topics/my-topic \
  -H 'content-type: application/vnd.kafka.json.v2+json' \
  -d '{
    "records": [
        {
            "key": "my-key",
            "value": "sales-lead-0001"
            "partition": 2
            "headers": [
              {
                "key": "key1",
                "value": "QXBhY2hlIEthZmthIGlzIHRoZSBib21iIQ==" 1
              }
            ]
        },
    ]
}'

1
The header value in binary format and encoded as Base64.

6.1.5.4. Accept headers

After creating a consumer, all subsequent GET requests must provide an Accept header in the following format:

Accept: application/vnd.kafka.EMBEDDED-DATA-FORMAT.v2+json

The EMBEDDED-DATA-FORMAT is either json or binary.

For example, when retrieving records for a subscribed consumer using an embedded data format of JSON, include this Accept header:

Accept: application/vnd.kafka.json.v2+json

6.1.6. CORS

Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) allows you to specify allowed methods and originating URLs for accessing the Kafka cluster in your Kafka Bridge HTTP configuration.

Example CORS configuration for Kafka Bridge

# ...
cors:
  allowedOrigins: "https://strimzi.io"
  allowedMethods: "GET,POST,PUT,DELETE,OPTIONS,PATCH"
  # ...

CORS allows for simple and preflighted requests between origin sources on different domains.

Simple requests are suitable for standard requests using GET, HEAD, POST methods.

A preflighted request sends a HTTP OPTIONS request as an initial check that the actual request is safe to send. On confirmation, the actual request is sent. Preflight requests are suitable for methods that require greater safeguards, such as PUT and DELETE, and use non-standard headers.

All requests require an Origin value in their header, which is the source of the HTTP request.

6.1.6.1. Simple request

For example, this simple request header specifies the origin as https://strimzi.io.

Origin: https://strimzi.io

The header information is added to the request.

curl -v -X GET HTTP-ADDRESS/bridge-consumer/records \
-H 'Origin: https://strimzi.io'\
-H 'content-type: application/vnd.kafka.v2+json'

In the response from the Kafka Bridge, an Access-Control-Allow-Origin header is returned.

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: * 1
1
Returning an asterisk (*) shows the resource can be accessed by any domain.

6.1.6.2. Preflighted request

An initial preflight request is sent to Kafka Bridge using an OPTIONS method. The HTTP OPTIONS request sends header information to check that Kafka Bridge will allow the actual request.

Here the preflight request checks that a POST request is valid from https://strimzi.io.

OPTIONS /my-group/instances/my-user/subscription HTTP/1.1
Origin: https://strimzi.io
Access-Control-Request-Method: POST 1
Access-Control-Request-Headers: Content-Type 2
1
Kafka Bridge is alerted that the actual request is a POST request.
2
The actual request will be sent with a Content-Type header.

OPTIONS is added to the header information of the preflight request.

curl -v -X OPTIONS -H 'Origin: https://strimzi.io' \
-H 'Access-Control-Request-Method: POST' \
-H 'content-type: application/vnd.kafka.v2+json'

Kafka Bridge responds to the initial request to confirm that the request will be accepted. The response header returns allowed origins, methods and headers.

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: https://strimzi.io
Access-Control-Allow-Methods: GET,POST,PUT,DELETE,OPTIONS,PATCH
Access-Control-Allow-Headers: content-type

If the origin or method is rejected, an error message is returned.

The actual request does not require Access-Control-Request-Method header, as it was confirmed in the preflight request, but it does require the origin header.

curl -v -X POST HTTP-ADDRESS/topics/bridge-topic \
-H 'Origin: https://strimzi.io' \
-H 'content-type: application/vnd.kafka.v2+json'

The response shows the originating URL is allowed.

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: https://strimzi.io

Additional resources

Fetch CORS specification

6.1.7. Kafka Bridge API resources

For the full list of REST API endpoints and descriptions, including example requests and responses, see the Kafka Bridge API reference.

6.1.8. Kafka Bridge deployment

You deploy the Kafka Bridge into your OpenShift cluster by using the Cluster Operator.

After the Kafka Bridge is deployed, the Cluster Operator creates Kafka Bridge objects in your OpenShift cluster. Objects include the deployment, service, and pod, each named after the name given in the custom resource for the Kafka Bridge.

Additional resources

6.2. Kafka Bridge quickstart

Use this quickstart to try out the AMQ Streams Kafka Bridge in your local development environment. You will learn how to:

  • Deploy the Kafka Bridge to your OpenShift cluster
  • Expose the Kafka Bridge service to your local machine by using port-forwarding
  • Produce messages to topics and partitions in your Kafka cluster
  • Create a Kafka Bridge consumer
  • Perform basic consumer operations, such as subscribing the consumer to topics and retrieving the messages that you produced

In this quickstart, HTTP requests are formatted as curl commands that you can copy and paste to your terminal. Access to an OpenShift cluster is required.

Ensure you have the prerequisites and then follow the tasks in the order provided in this chapter.

About data formats

In this quickstart, you will produce and consume messages in JSON format, not binary. For more information on the data formats and HTTP headers used in the example requests, see Section 6.1.5, “Requests to the Kafka Bridge”.

Prerequisites for the quickstart

  • Cluster administrator access to a local or remote OpenShift cluster.
  • AMQ Streams is installed.
  • A running Kafka cluster, deployed by the Cluster Operator, in an OpenShift namespace.
  • The Entity Operator is deployed and running as part of the Kafka cluster.

6.2.1. Deploying the Kafka Bridge to your OpenShift cluster

AMQ Streams includes a YAML example that specifies the configuration of the AMQ Streams Kafka Bridge. Make some minimal changes to this file and then deploy an instance of the Kafka Bridge to your OpenShift cluster.

Procedure

  1. Edit the examples/bridge/kafka-bridge.yaml file.

    apiVersion: kafka.strimzi.io/v1beta2
    kind: KafkaBridge
    metadata:
      name: quickstart 1
    spec:
      replicas: 1
      bootstrapServers: <cluster-name>-kafka-bootstrap:9092 2
      http:
        port: 8080
    1
    When the Kafka Bridge is deployed, -bridge is appended to the name of the deployment and other related resources. In this example, the Kafka Bridge deployment is named quickstart-bridge and the accompanying Kafka Bridge service is named quickstart-bridge-service.
    2
    In the bootstrapServers property, enter the name of the Kafka cluster as the <cluster-name>.
  2. Deploy the Kafka Bridge to your OpenShift cluster:

    oc apply -f examples/bridge/kafka-bridge.yaml

    A quickstart-bridge deployment, service, and other related resources are created in your OpenShift cluster.

  3. Verify that the Kafka Bridge was successfully deployed:

    oc get deployments
    NAME                             READY   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
    quickstart-bridge                  1/1     1            1          34m
    my-cluster-connect                 1/1     1            1          24h
    my-cluster-entity-operator         1/1     1            1          24h
    #...

What to do next

After deploying the Kafka Bridge to your OpenShift cluster, expose the Kafka Bridge service to your local machine.

Additional resources

6.2.2. Exposing the Kafka Bridge service to your local machine

Next, use port forwarding to expose the AMQ Streams Kafka Bridge service to your local machine on http://localhost:8080.

Note

Port forwarding is only suitable for development and testing purposes.

Procedure

  1. List the names of the pods in your OpenShift cluster:

    oc get pods -o name
    
    pod/kafka-consumer
    # ...
    pod/quickstart-bridge-589d78784d-9jcnr
    pod/strimzi-cluster-operator-76bcf9bc76-8dnfm
  2. Connect to the quickstart-bridge pod on port 8080:

    oc port-forward pod/quickstart-bridge-589d78784d-9jcnr 8080:8080 &
    Note

    If port 8080 on your local machine is already in use, use an alternative HTTP port, such as 8008.

API requests are now forwarded from port 8080 on your local machine to port 8080 in the Kafka Bridge pod.

6.2.3. Producing messages to topics and partitions

Next, produce messages to topics in JSON format by using the topics endpoint. You can specify destination partitions for messages in the request body, as shown here. The partitions endpoint provides an alternative method for specifying a single destination partition for all messages as a path parameter.

Procedure

  1. In a text editor, create a YAML definition for a Kafka topic with three partitions.

    apiVersion: kafka.strimzi.io/v1beta2
    kind: KafkaTopic
    metadata:
      name: bridge-quickstart-topic
      labels:
        strimzi.io/cluster: <kafka-cluster-name> 1
    spec:
      partitions: 3 2
      replicas: 1
      config:
        retention.ms: 7200000
        segment.bytes: 1073741824
    1
    The name of the Kafka cluster in which the Kafka Bridge is deployed.
    2
    The number of partitions for the topic.
  2. Save the file to the examples/topic directory as bridge-quickstart-topic.yaml.
  3. Create the topic in your OpenShift cluster:

    oc apply -f examples/topic/bridge-quickstart-topic.yaml
  4. Using the Kafka Bridge, produce three messages to the topic you created:

    curl -X POST \
      http://localhost:8080/topics/bridge-quickstart-topic \
      -H 'content-type: application/vnd.kafka.json.v2+json' \
      -d '{
        "records": [
            {
                "key": "my-key",
                "value": "sales-lead-0001"
            },
            {
                "value": "sales-lead-0002",
                "partition": 2
            },
            {
                "value": "sales-lead-0003"
            }
        ]
    }'
    • sales-lead-0001 is sent to a partition based on the hash of the key.
    • sales-lead-0002 is sent directly to partition 2.
    • sales-lead-0003 is sent to a partition in the bridge-quickstart-topic topic using a round-robin method.
  5. If the request is successful, the Kafka Bridge returns an offsets array, along with a 200 code and a content-type header of application/vnd.kafka.v2+json. For each message, the offsets array describes:

    • The partition that the message was sent to
    • The current message offset of the partition

      Example response

      #...
      {
        "offsets":[
          {
            "partition":0,
            "offset":0
          },
          {
            "partition":2,
            "offset":0
          },
          {
            "partition":0,
            "offset":1
          }
        ]
      }

What to do next

After producing messages to topics and partitions, create a Kafka Bridge consumer.

Additional resources

6.2.4. Creating a Kafka Bridge consumer

Before you can perform any consumer operations in the Kafka cluster, you must first create a consumer by using the consumers endpoint. The consumer is referred to as a Kafka Bridge consumer.

Procedure

  1. Create a Kafka Bridge consumer in a new consumer group named bridge-quickstart-consumer-group:

    curl -X POST http://localhost:8080/consumers/bridge-quickstart-consumer-group \
      -H 'content-type: application/vnd.kafka.v2+json' \
      -d '{
        "name": "bridge-quickstart-consumer",
        "auto.offset.reset": "earliest",
        "format": "json",
        "enable.auto.commit": false,
        "fetch.min.bytes": 512,
        "consumer.request.timeout.ms": 30000
      }'
    • The consumer is named bridge-quickstart-consumer and the embedded data format is set as json.
    • Some basic configuration settings are defined.
    • The consumer will not commit offsets to the log automatically because the enable.auto.commit setting is false. You will commit the offsets manually later in this quickstart.

      If the request is successful, the Kafka Bridge returns the consumer ID (instance_id) and base URL (base_uri) in the response body, along with a 200 code.

      Example response

      #...
      {
        "instance_id": "bridge-quickstart-consumer",
        "base_uri":"http://<bridge-name>-bridge-service:8080/consumers/bridge-quickstart-consumer-group/instances/bridge-quickstart-consumer"
      }

  2. Copy the base URL (base_uri) to use in the other consumer operations in this quickstart.

What to do next

Now that you have created a Kafka Bridge consumer, you can subscribe it to topics.

Additional resources

6.2.5. Subscribing a Kafka Bridge consumer to topics

After you have created a Kafka Bridge consumer, subscribe it to one or more topics by using the subscription endpoint. Once subscribed, the consumer starts receiving all messages that are produced to the topic.

Procedure

  • Subscribe the consumer to the bridge-quickstart-topic topic that you created earlier, in Producing messages to topics and partitions:

    curl -X POST http://localhost:8080/consumers/bridge-quickstart-consumer-group/instances/bridge-quickstart-consumer/subscription \
      -H 'content-type: application/vnd.kafka.v2+json' \
      -d '{
        "topics": [
            "bridge-quickstart-topic"
        ]
    }'

    The topics array can contain a single topic (as shown here) or multiple topics. If you want to subscribe the consumer to multiple topics that match a regular expression, you can use the topic_pattern string instead of the topics array.

    If the request is successful, the Kafka Bridge returns a 204 (No Content) code only.

What to do next

After subscribing a Kafka Bridge consumer to topics, you can retrieve messages from the consumer.

Additional resources

6.2.6. Retrieving the latest messages from a Kafka Bridge consumer

Next, retrieve the latest messages from the Kafka Bridge consumer by requesting data from the records endpoint. In production, HTTP clients can call this endpoint repeatedly (in a loop).

Procedure

  1. Produce additional messages to the Kafka Bridge consumer, as described in Producing messages to topics and partitions.
  2. Submit a GET request to the records endpoint:

    curl -X GET http://localhost:8080/consumers/bridge-quickstart-consumer-group/instances/bridge-quickstart-consumer/records \
      -H 'accept: application/vnd.kafka.json.v2+json'

    After creating and subscribing to a Kafka Bridge consumer, a first GET request will return an empty response because the poll operation starts a rebalancing process to assign partitions.

  3. Repeat step two to retrieve messages from the Kafka Bridge consumer.

    The Kafka Bridge returns an array of messages — describing the topic name, key, value, partition, and offset — in the response body, along with a 200 code. Messages are retrieved from the latest offset by default.

    HTTP/1.1 200 OK
    content-type: application/vnd.kafka.json.v2+json
    #...
    [
      {
        "topic":"bridge-quickstart-topic",
        "key":"my-key",
        "value":"sales-lead-0001",
        "partition":0,
        "offset":0
      },
      {
        "topic":"bridge-quickstart-topic",
        "key":null,
        "value":"sales-lead-0003",
        "partition":0,
        "offset":1
      },
    #...
    Note

    If an empty response is returned, produce more records to the consumer as described in Producing messages to topics and partitions, and then try retrieving messages again.

What to do next

After retrieving messages from a Kafka Bridge consumer, try committing offsets to the log.

Additional resources

6.2.7. Commiting offsets to the log

Next, use the offsets endpoint to manually commit offsets to the log for all messages received by the Kafka Bridge consumer. This is required because the Kafka Bridge consumer that you created earlier, in Creating a Kafka Bridge consumer, was configured with the enable.auto.commit setting as false.

Procedure

  • Commit offsets to the log for the bridge-quickstart-consumer:

    curl -X POST http://localhost:8080/consumers/bridge-quickstart-consumer-group/instances/bridge-quickstart-consumer/offsets

    Because no request body is submitted, offsets are committed for all the records that have been received by the consumer. Alternatively, the request body can contain an array (OffsetCommitSeekList) that specifies the topics and partitions that you want to commit offsets for.

    If the request is successful, the Kafka Bridge returns a 204 code only.

What to do next

After committing offsets to the log, try out the endpoints for seeking to offsets.

Additional resources

6.2.8. Seeking to offsets for a partition

Next, use the positions endpoints to configure the Kafka Bridge consumer to retrieve messages for a partition from a specific offset, and then from the latest offset. This is referred to in Apache Kafka as a seek operation.

Procedure

  1. Seek to a specific offset for partition 0 of the quickstart-bridge-topic topic:

    curl -X POST http://localhost:8080/consumers/bridge-quickstart-consumer-group/instances/bridge-quickstart-consumer/positions \
      -H 'content-type: application/vnd.kafka.v2+json' \
      -d '{
        "offsets": [
            {
                "topic": "bridge-quickstart-topic",
                "partition": 0,
                "offset": 2
            }
        ]
    }'

    If the request is successful, the Kafka Bridge returns a 204 code only.

  2. Submit a GET request to the records endpoint:

    curl -X GET http://localhost:8080/consumers/bridge-quickstart-consumer-group/instances/bridge-quickstart-consumer/records \
      -H 'accept: application/vnd.kafka.json.v2+json'

    The Kafka Bridge returns messages from the offset that you seeked to.

  3. Restore the default message retrieval behavior by seeking to the last offset for the same partition. This time, use the positions/end endpoint.

    curl -X POST http://localhost:8080/consumers/bridge-quickstart-consumer-group/instances/bridge-quickstart-consumer/positions/end \
      -H 'content-type: application/vnd.kafka.v2+json' \
      -d '{
        "partitions": [
            {
                "topic": "bridge-quickstart-topic",
                "partition": 0
            }
        ]
    }'

    If the request is successful, the Kafka Bridge returns another 204 code.

Note

You can also use the positions/beginning endpoint to seek to the first offset for one or more partitions.

What to do next

In this quickstart, you have used the AMQ Streams Kafka Bridge to perform several common operations on a Kafka cluster. You can now delete the Kafka Bridge consumer that you created earlier.

Additional resources

6.2.9. Deleting a Kafka Bridge consumer

Finally, delete the Kafa Bridge consumer that you used throughout this quickstart.

Procedure

  • Delete the Kafka Bridge consumer by sending a DELETE request to the instances endpoint.

    curl -X DELETE http://localhost:8080/consumers/bridge-quickstart-consumer-group/instances/bridge-quickstart-consumer

    If the request is successful, the Kafka Bridge returns a 204 code only.

Additional resources