Getting to know the Grafka UI

This is a simple guide for how to use Grafka like a "real" user would.

Step 1: Start Grafka

You can start up a sample Grafka ecosystem with the provided docker-compose file at the root of the project:

docker-compose build
docker-compose up

Step 2: Save a cluster configuration

Navigate to http://localhost:3000 in a browser, and open the "clusters" menu, and add the following configuration. The name has no functional purpose, it's just a label so call it whatever you like:

application.id=grafka
group.id=grafka
bootstrap.servers=kafka1:9092

key.serializer=org.apache.kafka.common.serialization.StringSerializer
value.serializer=org.apache.kafka.common.serialization.StringSerializer

key.deserializer=org.apache.kafka.common.serialization.StringDeserializer
value.deserializer=org.apache.kafka.common.serialization.StringDeserializer

Note: The configuration above does not contain a schema registry config, let's just keep it simple for now!

Troubleshooting: Are all services running? What do you see if you run docker-compose logs api? Is the bootstrap.servers set to "kafka1" or "localhost"? You should only use "localhost" when you are running the Spring app in your IDE.

Step 3: Inspect the topics

Once the cluster has been successfully saved, you should see a couple of metadata topics that were created by the various services in the docker-compose file. Click on the number of topics to visit a listing.

Step 4: View a topic details

Now that you're seeing a listing of topics for the given cluster, click into one and explore the tabs.

Coming soon: I'm making a lot of changes in the "messages" branch right now to flush this section out. Coming eventually: You should be able to create topics, and send messages through the Grafka UI.