SimplePythonKafkaConsumer

A very simple Python application used to consume Kafka messages. Displays information about those messages using curses. It is relatively easy to extend functionality by writing your own parser that inherits from BaseDataParser.

Requirements

This application uses PyKafka for Kafka consumer functionality. Download it from here: https://github.com/Parsely/pykafka.

For the ParseNDArray_fb parser, flatbuffers is required which can be downloaded from: https://github.com/google/flatbuffers. The visualisation functionality in ParseNDArray_fb also requires matplotlib to be installed.

All other libraries should be included in a standard Python installation. The application has been tested with Python 2.7 and Python 3.5 and should work with all versions in between.

Running the application

The following arguments are possible/required:

• -b Broker to connect to (required).
• -t Topic to subscribe to (required).
• -p Parser to use, defaults to "BaseDataParser".
• -d Debug mode, usefull when writing new parsers.

Some examples of running the application follows:

python3.5 ConsumerTest.py -b 10.4.0.215:9092 -t ad_topic -p StringParser

python3.5 ConsumerTest.py -b 10.4.0.215:9092 -t ad_topic

python3.5 ConsumerTest.py -d -b 10.4.0.215:9092 -t ad_topic

Extending the functionality

Use StrinParser.py and ParseNDArray_fb.py as templates for writing your own parsers.