Kafka Connector¶
The Kafka Connector allows you to ingest data from your existing Kafka cluster and load it into Tinybird.
The Kafka Connector is fully managed and requires no additional tooling. Connect Tinybird to your Kafka cluster, choose a topic, and Tinybird will automatically begin consuming messages from Kafka.
Using .datasource files¶
If you are managing your Tinybird resources in files, there are several settings available to configure the Kafka Connector in .datasource
files.
KAFKA_CONNECTION_NAME
: The name of the configured Kafka connection in TinybirdKAFKA_BOOTSTRAP_SERVERS
: A comma-separated list of one or more Kafka brokers (including Port numbers)KAFKA_KEY
: The key used to authenticate with Kafka, sometimes called Key, Client Key, or Username, depending on the Kafka distributionKAFKA_SECRET
: The secret used to authenticate with Kafka, sometimes called Secret, Secret Key, or Password, depending on the Kafka distributionKAFKA_TOPIC
: The name of the Kafka topic to consume fromKAFKA_GROUP_ID
: The Kafka Consumer Group ID to use when consuming from KafkaKAFKA_AUTO_OFFSET_RESET
: The offset to use when no previous offset can be found, e.g. when creating a new consumer. Supported values:latest
,earliest
. Default:latest
.KAFKA_STORE_RAW_VALUE
: Optionally, you can store the raw message in its entirety as an additional column. Supported values:'True'
,'False'
. Default:'False'
For example, to define Data Source with a new Kafka connection in a .datasource
file:
SCHEMA >
`value` String,
`topic` LowCardinality(String),
`partition` Int16,
`offset` Int64,
`timestamp` DateTime,
`key` String
ENGINE "MergeTree"
ENGINE_PARTITION_KEY "toYYYYMM(timestamp)"
ENGINE_SORTING_KEY "timestamp"
KAFKA_CONNECTION_NAME my_connection_name
KAFKA_BOOTSTRAP_SERVERS my_server:9092
KAFKA_KEY my_username
KAFKA_SECRET my_password
KAFKA_TOPIC my_topic
KAFKA_GROUP_ID my_group_id
Or, to define Data Source that uses an exsting Kafka connection:
SCHEMA >
`value` String,
`topic` LowCardinality(String),
`partition` Int16,
`offset` Int64,
`timestamp` DateTime,
`key` String
ENGINE "MergeTree"
ENGINE_PARTITION_KEY "toYYYYMM(timestamp)"
ENGINE_SORTING_KEY "timestamp"
KAFKA_CONNECTION_NAME my_connection_name
KAFKA_TOPIC my_topic
KAFKA_GROUP_ID my_group_id
Using INCLUDE to store connection settings¶
To avoid configuring the same connection settings across many files, or to prevent leaking sensitive information, you can store connection details in an external file and use INCLUDE
to import them into one or more .datasource
files.
You can find more information about INCLUDE
in the Advanced Templates documentation.
As an example, you may have two Kafka .datasource
files, which re-use the same Kafka connection. You can create an include file which stores the Kafka connection details.
The Tinybird project may use the following structure:
ecommerce_data_project/
datasources/
connections/
my_connector_name.incl
my_kafka_datasource.datasource
another_datasource.datasource
endpoints/
pipes/
Where the file my_connector_name.incl
has the following content:
KAFKA_CONNECTION_NAME my_connection_name
KAFKA_BOOTSTRAP_SERVERS my_server:9092
KAFKA_KEY my_username
KAFKA_SECRET my_password
And the Kafka .datasource
files look like the following:
SCHEMA >
`value` String,
`topic` LowCardinality(String),
`partition` Int16,
`offset` Int64,
`timestamp` DateTime,
`key` String
ENGINE "MergeTree"
ENGINE_PARTITION_KEY "toYYYYMM(timestamp)"
ENGINE_SORTING_KEY "timestamp"
INCLUDE "connections/my_connection_name.incl"
KAFKA_TOPIC my_topic
KAFKA_GROUP_ID my_group_id
When using tb pull
to pull a Kafka Data Source using the CLI, the KAFKA_KEY
and KAFKA_SECRET
settings will not be included in the file to avoid exposing credentials.
FAQs¶
Is the Kafka Schema Registry supported?¶
Yes, for decoding Avro messages. You can choose to enable Schema Registry support when connecting Tinybird to Kafka. You will be prompted to add your Schema Registry connection details, e.g. https://<SCHEMA_REGISTRY_API_KEY>:<SCHEMA_REGISTRY_API_SECRET>@<SCHEMA_REGISTRY_API_URL>
.
However, the Kafka Data Source schema will not be defined using the Schema Registry, the Schema Registry is simply used to decode the messages.
Can Tinybird ingest compressed messages?¶
Yes, Tinybird can consume from Kafka topics where Kafka compression has been enabled, as decompressing the message is a standard function of the Kafka Consumer.
However, if you compressed the message before passing it through the Kafka Producer, then Tinybird cannot do post-Consumer processing to decompress the message.
For example, if you compressed a JSON message through gzip and produced it to a Kafka topic as a bytes
message, it would be ingested by Tinybird as bytes
. If you produced a JSON message to a Kafka topic with the Kafka Producer setting compression.type=gzip, while it would be stored in Kafka as compressed bytes, it would be decoded on ingestion and arrive to Tinybird as JSON.