kplay
Inspect messages in a Kafka topic from the terminal
TLDR
SYNOPSIS
kplay command profile [flags]
DESCRIPTION
kplay (kafka-playground) lets you inspect messages in a Kafka topic in a simple and deliberate manner. It provides both a TUI and a web interface for fetching records on demand, browsing them in a list, saving them locally, or forwarding them to S3.Messages can be decoded in JSON, protobuf, or raw formats. Profiles are configured in a YAML config file, each with its own broker, encoding, and authentication details. Messages are persisted to $HOME/.kplay by default.
PARAMETERS
tui PROFILE
Launch the terminal user interface for browsing messages on demand.serve PROFILE
Start a web interface for browsing topic messages.scan PROFILE
Scan message summaries and optionally export them locally.forward PROFILES DESTINATION
Consume messages and forward them to a remote destination (e.g., AWS S3).-c, --config-path string
Location of kplay's config file (also via $KPLAYCONFIGPATH).-o, --from-offset string
Start consuming messages from a specific offset.-t, --from-timestamp string
Start consuming from a timestamp (RFC3339 format).-n, --num-records uint
Maximum number of messages to scan (scan subcommand, default 1000).-O, --output-dir string
Directory to persist messages in (default $HOME/.kplay).-s, --save-messages
Export messages to the filesystem (scan subcommand).-p, --persist-messages
Start with message persistence enabled (tui subcommand).--debug
Display parsed configuration without running.
CAVEATS
Requires a running Kafka cluster and properly configured profiles. Authentication and encoding must be set up per-profile before use.
HISTORY
kplay was created by dhth and is written in Go. It was designed for simple, deliberate Kafka message inspection without the overhead of full-featured Kafka management tools.
