KCAT(1)

NAME
kcat - generic producer and consumer for Apache Kafka

SYNOPSIS
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]

DESCRIPTION
kcat is a generic non-JVM producer and consumer for Apache Kafka 0.8, think of it as a netcat for Kafka.

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. In consumer mode ( -C ), kcat reads messages from a topic and partition and prints them to stdout using the configured message delimiter.

If neither -P or -C are specified kcat attempts to figure out the mode automatically based on stdin/stdout tty types.

kcat also features a metadata list mode ( -L ), to display the current state of the Kafka cluster and its topics and partitions.

SEE ALSO
For a more extensive help and some simple examples, run kcat with -h flag.