Kafka

The Kafka source connector pulls data from a Kafka topic and persists the data into an Apache Pulsar™ topic.

For more, see Apache Pulsar’s Kafka source documentation.

Get Started

Set the following environment variables using pulsar-admin or curl:

export TENANT=<replace-me>
export DESTINATION_TOPIC=<replace-me>
export NAMESPACE=default
export SOURCE_NAME=kafka-src

  • Pulsar Admin

  • curl

  • Sample Config Data

Refer to the complete pulsar-admin sources spec for all available options.

Assuming you have downloaded client.conf to the Pulsar folder:

./bin/pulsar-admin sources create \
  --source-type kafka \
  --name "$SOURCE_NAME" \
  --destination-topic-name "persistent://$TENANT/$NAMESPACE/$DESTINATION_TOPIC" \
  --tenant "$TENANT" \
  --source-config '{
    "bootstrapServers": "asdasd",
    "consumerConfigProperties": {
      "sasl.jaas.config": "sensitive_data_removed",
      "sasl.mechanism": "PLAIN",
      "sasl.password": "sensitive_data_removed",
      "sasl.username": "asdasd",
      "security.protocol": "SASL_SSL"
    },
    "groupId": "asd",
    "topic": "asdasd"
    }'

You need a Pulsar token for REST API authentication. This is different from your Astra DB application tokens.

  1. In the Astra Portal header, click Applications, and then select Streaming.

  2. Click your tenant’s name, and then click the Settings tab.

  3. Click Create Token.

  4. Copy the token, store it securely, and then click Close.

  5. Click the Connect tab, and then copy the Web Service URL.

  6. Create environment variables for your tenant’s token and web service URL:

    export WEB_SERVICE_URL=<replace-me>
export ASTRA_STREAMING_TOKEN=<replace-me>

    Refer to the complete Pulsar sources REST API spec, for all available options.

curl -sS --fail -X POST "$WEB_SERVICE_URL/admin/v3/astrasources/$TENANT/$NAMESPACE/$SOURCE_NAME" \
  -H "accept: application/json" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Authorization: $ASTRA_STREAMING_TOKEN" \
  -d '{
        "tenant": "'$TENANT'",
        "topicName": "persistent://'$TENANT'/'$NAMESPACE'/'$DESTINATION_TOPIC'",
        "name": "'$SOURCE_NAME'",
        "namespace": "'$NAMESPACE'",
        "archive": "builtin://kafka",
        "parallelism": 1,
        "processingGuarantees": "ATLEAST_ONCE",
        "configs": {
          "bootstrapServers": "asdasd",
          "consumerConfigProperties": {
            "sasl.jaas.config": "sensitive_data_removed",
            "sasl.mechanism": "PLAIN",
            "sasl.password": "sensitive_data_removed",
            "sasl.username": "asdasd",
            "security.protocol": "SASL_SSL"
          },
          "groupId": "asd",
          "topic": "asdasd"
        }
      }'
{
    "bootstrapServers": "asdasd",
    "consumerConfigProperties": {
        "sasl.jaas.config": "sensitive_data_removed",
        "sasl.mechanism": "PLAIN",
        "sasl.password": "sensitive_data_removed",
        "sasl.username": "asdasd",
        "security.protocol": "SASL_SSL"
    },
    "groupId": "asd",
    "topic": "asdasd"
}

Managing the Connector

Start

  • Pulsar Admin

  • curl

Refer to the complete pulsar-admin sources spec for all available options.

Assuming you have downloaded client.conf to the Pulsar folder:

# Start all instances of a connector
./bin/pulsar-admin sources start \
  --namespace "$NAMESPACE" \
  --name "$SOURCE_NAME" \
  --tenant "$TENANT"

# optionally add --instance-id to only start an individual instance

You need a Pulsar token for REST API authentication. This is different from your Astra DB application tokens.

  1. In the Astra Portal header, click Applications, and then select Streaming.

  2. Click your tenant’s name, and then click the Settings tab.

  3. Click Create Token.

  4. Copy the token, store it securely, and then click Close.

  5. Click the Connect tab, and then copy the Web Service URL.

  6. Create environment variables for your tenant’s token and web service URL:

    export WEB_SERVICE_URL=<replace-me>
export ASTRA_STREAMING_TOKEN=<replace-me>

    Refer to the complete Pulsar sources REST API spec, for all available options.

Start all instances of a connector:

curl -sS --fail -X POST "$WEB_SERVICE_URL/admin/v3/sources/$TENANT/$NAMESPACE/$SOURCE_NAME/start" \
  -H "Authorization: $ASTRA_STREAMING_TOKEN"

Start an individual instance of a connector:

curl -sS --fail -X POST "$WEB_SERVICE_URL/admin/v3/sources/$TENANT/$NAMESPACE/$SOURCE_NAME/$SOURCE_INSTANCEID/start" \
  -H "Authorization: $ASTRA_STREAMING_TOKEN"

Stop

  • Pulsar Admin

  • curl

Refer to the complete pulsar-admin sources spec for all available options.

Assuming you have downloaded client.conf to the Pulsar folder:

# Stop all instances of a connector
./bin/pulsar-admin sources stop \
  --namespace "$NAMESPACE" \
  --name "$SOURCE_NAME" \
  --tenant "$TENANT"

# optionally add --instance-id to only stop an individual instance

You need a Pulsar token for REST API authentication. This is different from your Astra DB application tokens.

  1. In the Astra Portal header, click Applications, and then select Streaming.

  2. Click your tenant’s name, and then click the Settings tab.

  3. Click Create Token.

  4. Copy the token, store it securely, and then click Close.

  5. Click the Connect tab, and then copy the Web Service URL.

  6. Create environment variables for your tenant’s token and web service URL:

    export WEB_SERVICE_URL=<replace-me>
export ASTRA_STREAMING_TOKEN=<replace-me>

    Refer to the complete Pulsar sources REST API spec, for all available options.

Stop all instances of a connector:

curl -sS --fail -X POST "$WEB_SERVICE_URL/admin/v3/sources/$TENANT/$NAMESPACE/$SOURCE_NAME/stop" \
  -H "Authorization: $ASTRA_STREAMING_TOKEN"

Stop an individual instance of a connector:

curl -sS --fail -X POST "$WEB_SERVICE_URL/admin/v3/sources/$TENANT/$NAMESPACE/$SOURCE_NAME/$SOURCE_INSTANCEID/stop" \
  -H "Authorization: $ASTRA_STREAMING_TOKEN"

Restart

  • Pulsar Admin

  • curl

Refer to the complete pulsar-admin sources spec for all available options.

Assuming you have downloaded client.conf to the Pulsar folder:

# Restart all instances of a connector
./bin/pulsar-admin sources restart \
  --namespace "$NAMESPACE" \
  --name "$SOURCE_NAME" \
  --tenant "$TENANT"

# optionally add --instance-id to only restart an individual instance

You need a Pulsar token for REST API authentication. This is different from your Astra DB application tokens.

  1. In the Astra Portal header, click Applications, and then select Streaming.

  2. Click your tenant’s name, and then click the Settings tab.

  3. Click Create Token.

  4. Copy the token, store it securely, and then click Close.

  5. Click the Connect tab, and then copy the Web Service URL.

  6. Create environment variables for your tenant’s token and web service URL:

    export WEB_SERVICE_URL=<replace-me>
export ASTRA_STREAMING_TOKEN=<replace-me>

    Refer to the complete Pulsar sources REST API spec, for all available options.

# Restart all instances of a connector
curl -sS --fail -X POST "$WEB_SERVICE_URL/admin/v3/sources/$TENANT/$NAMESPACE/$SOURCE_NAME/restart" \
  -H "Authorization: $ASTRA_STREAMING_TOKEN"

# Restart an individual instance of a connector
curl -sS --fail -X POST "$WEB_SERVICE_URL/admin/v3/sources/$TENANT/$NAMESPACE/$SOURCE_NAME/$SOURCE_INSTANCEID/restart" \
  -H "Authorization: $ASTRA_STREAMING_TOKEN"

Update

  • Pulsar Admin

  • curl

Refer to the complete pulsar-admin sources spec for all available options.

Assuming you have downloaded client.conf to the Pulsar folder:

./bin/pulsar-admin sources update \
  --source-type kafka \
  --name "$SOURCE_NAME" \
  --destination-topic-name "persistent://$TENANT/$NAMESPACE/$DESTINATION_TOPIC" \
  --tenant "$TENANT" \
  --parallelism 2 \
  --source-config '{}'

You need a Pulsar token for REST API authentication. This is different from your Astra DB application tokens.

  1. In the Astra Portal header, click Applications, and then select Streaming.

  2. Click your tenant’s name, and then click the Settings tab.

  3. Click Create Token.

  4. Copy the token, store it securely, and then click Close.

  5. Click the Connect tab, and then copy the Web Service URL.

  6. Create environment variables for your tenant’s token and web service URL:

    export WEB_SERVICE_URL=<replace-me>
export ASTRA_STREAMING_TOKEN=<replace-me>

    Refer to the complete Pulsar sources REST API spec, for all available options.

curl -sS --fail -X PUT "$WEB_SERVICE_URL/admin/v3/astrasources/$TENANT/$NAMESPACE/$SOURCE_NAME" \
  -H "accept: application/json" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Authorization: $ASTRA_STREAMING_TOKEN" \
  -d '{
        "tenant": "'$TENANT'",
        "topicName": "persistent://'$TENANT'/'$NAMESPACE'/'$DESTINATION_TOPIC'",
        "name": "'$SOURCE_NAME'",
        "namespace": "'$NAMESPACE'",
        "archive": "builtin://kafka",
        "parallelism": 1,
        "processingGuarantees": "ATLEAST_ONCE",
        "configs": {
          "bootstrapServers": "asdasd",
          "consumerConfigProperties": {
            "sasl.jaas.config": "sensitive_data_removed",
            "sasl.mechanism": "PLAIN",
            "sasl.password": "sensitive_data_removed",
            "sasl.username": "asdasd",
            "security.protocol": "SASL_SSL"
          },
          "groupId": "asd",
          "topic": "asdasd"
        }
      }'
Result 
 {
   "tenant": "string",
   "namespace": "string",
   "name": "string",
   "className": "string",
   "topicName": "string",
   "producerConfig": {
     "maxPendingMessages": 0,
     "maxPendingMessagesAcrossPartitions": 0,
     "useThreadLocalProducers": true,
     "cryptoConfig": {
       "cryptoKeyReaderClassName": "string",
       "cryptoKeyReaderConfig": {
         "property1": {},
         "property2": {}
       },
       "encryptionKeys": [
         "string"
       ],
       "producerCryptoFailureAction": "FAIL",
       "consumerCryptoFailureAction": "FAIL"
     },
     "batchBuilder": "string"
   },
   "serdeClassName": "string",
   "schemaType": "string",
   "configs": {
     "property1": {},
     "property2": {}
   },
   "secrets": {
     "property1": {},
     "property2": {}
   },
   "parallelism": 0,
   "processingGuarantees": "ATLEAST_ONCE",
   "resources": {
     "cpu": 0,
     "ram": 0,
     "disk": 0
   },
   "archive": "string",
   "runtimeFlags": "string",
   "customRuntimeOptions": "string",
   "batchSourceConfig": {
     "discoveryTriggererClassName": "string",
     "discoveryTriggererConfig": {
       "property1": {},
       "property2": {}
     }
   },
   "batchBuilder": "string"
}

Delete

  • Pulsar Admin

  • curl

Refer to the complete pulsar-admin sources spec for all available options.

Assuming you have downloaded client.conf to the Pulsar folder:

# Delete all instances of a connector
./bin/pulsar-admin sources delete \
  --namespace "$NAMESPACE" \
  --name "$SOURCE_NAME" \
  --tenant "$TENANT"

You need a Pulsar token for REST API authentication. This is different from your Astra DB application tokens.

  1. In the Astra Portal header, click Applications, and then select Streaming.

  2. Click your tenant’s name, and then click the Settings tab.

  3. Click Create Token.

  4. Copy the token, store it securely, and then click Close.

  5. Click the Connect tab, and then copy the Web Service URL.

  6. Create environment variables for your tenant’s token and web service URL:

    export WEB_SERVICE_URL=<replace-me>
export ASTRA_STREAMING_TOKEN=<replace-me>

    Refer to the complete Pulsar sources REST API spec, for all available options.

# Delete all instances of a connector
curl -sS --fail -X DELETE "$WEB_SERVICE_URL/admin/v3/sources/$TENANT/$NAMESPACE/$SOURCE_NAME" \
  -H "Authorization: $ASTRA_STREAMING_TOKEN"

Monitoring the Connector

Info

  • Pulsar Admin

  • curl

  • Sample Config Data

Refer to the complete pulsar-admin sources spec for all available options.

Assuming you have downloaded client.conf to the Pulsar folder:

# Get information about connector
./bin/pulsar-admin sources get \
  --namespace "$NAMESPACE" \
  --name "$SOURCE_NAME" \
  --tenant "$TENANT"

You need a Pulsar token for REST API authentication. This is different from your Astra DB application tokens.

  1. In the Astra Portal header, click Applications, and then select Streaming.

  2. Click your tenant’s name, and then click the Settings tab.

  3. Click Create Token.

  4. Copy the token, store it securely, and then click Close.

  5. Click the Connect tab, and then copy the Web Service URL.

  6. Create environment variables for your tenant’s token and web service URL:

    export WEB_SERVICE_URL=<replace-me>
export ASTRA_STREAMING_TOKEN=<replace-me>

  7. Use these values to form curl commands to the REST API, for example:

    # Get a connector's information
curl -sS --fail "$WEB_SERVICE_URL/admin/v3/sources/$TENANT/$NAMESPACE/$SOURCE_NAME" \
  -H "accept: application/json" \
  -H "Authorization: $ASTRA_STREAMING_TOKEN"
{
    "bootstrapServers": "asdasd",
    "consumerConfigProperties": {
        "sasl.jaas.config": "sensitive_data_removed",
        "sasl.mechanism": "PLAIN",
        "sasl.password": "sensitive_data_removed",
        "sasl.username": "asdasd",
        "security.protocol": "SASL_SSL"
    },
    "groupId": "asd",
    "topic": "asdasd"
}

Health

  • Pulsar Admin

  • curl

Refer to the complete pulsar-admin sources spec for all available options.

Assuming you have downloaded client.conf to the Pulsar folder:

# Check connector status
./bin/pulsar-admin sources status \
  --instance-id "$SOURCE_INSTANCEID" \
  --namespace "$NAMESPACE" \
  --name "$SOURCE_NAME" \
  --tenant "$TENANT"

You need a Pulsar token for REST API authentication. This is different from your Astra DB application tokens.

  1. In the Astra Portal header, click Applications, and then select Streaming.

  2. Click your tenant’s name, and then click the Settings tab.

  3. Click Create Token.

  4. Copy the token, store it securely, and then click Close.

  5. Click the Connect tab, and then copy the Web Service URL.

  6. Create environment variables for your tenant’s token and web service URL:

    export WEB_SERVICE_URL=<replace-me>
export ASTRA_STREAMING_TOKEN=<replace-me>

  7. Use these values to form curl commands to the REST API, for example:

    # Get the status of all connector instances
curl -sS --fail "$WEB_SERVICE_URL/admin/v3/sources/$TENANT/$NAMESPACE/$SOURCE_NAME/status" \
  -H "accept: application/json" \
  -H "Authorization: $ASTRA_STREAMING_TOKEN"

# Get the status of an individual connector instance
curl "$WEB_SERVICE_URL/admin/v3/sources/$TENANT/$NAMESPACE/$SOURCE_NAME/$SOURCE_INSTANCEID/status" \
  -H "accept: application/json" \
  -H "Authorization: $ASTRA_STREAMING_TOKEN"
Result

Status response for all connector instances:

{
  "numInstances": 0,
  "numRunning": 0,
  "instances": [
    {
      "instanceId": 0,
      "status": {
        "running": true,
        "error": "string",
        "numRestarts": 0,
        "numReceivedFromSource": 0,
        "numSystemExceptions": 0,
        "latestSystemExceptions": [
          {
            "exceptionString": "string",
            "timestampMs": 0
          }
        ],
        "numSourceExceptions": 0,
        "latestSourceExceptions": [
          {
            "exceptionString": "string",
            "timestampMs": 0
          }
        ],
        "numWritten": 0,
        "lastReceivedTime": 0,
        "workerId": "string"
      }
    }
  ]
}

Status response for individual connector instance:

{
  "running": true,
  "error": "string",
  "numRestarts": 0,
  "numReceivedFromSource": 0,
  "numSystemExceptions": 0,
  "latestSystemExceptions": [
    {
      "exceptionString": "string",
      "timestampMs": 0
    }
  ],
  "numSourceExceptions": 0,
  "latestSourceExceptions": [
    {
      "exceptionString": "string",
      "timestampMs": 0
    }
  ],
  "numWritten": 0,
  "lastReceivedTime": 0,
  "workerId": "string"
}

Metrics

Astra Streaming exposes Prometheus formatted metrics for every connector. Refer to scrape metrics with Prometheus page for more detail.

Connector Reference

There are two sets of parameters that support source connectors.

Astra Streaming

Name Required Default Description

archive

true

The connector type, like 'builtin://debezium-mysql'

batchBuilder

false

BatchBuilder provides two types of batch construction methods, DEFAULT and KEY_BASED. The default value is: DEFAULT

batchSourceConfig

false

Batch source config key/value (as a JSON string)

className

true

The connector type’s class reference, like 'org.apache.pulsar.io.debezium.mysql.DebeziumMysqlSource'

configs

false

{}

JSON key/value config of source type specific settings. Example: {"property1":"1234","property2":{"subProperty":"asdf"}}

customRuntimeOptions

false

A string that encodes options to customize the runtime, see Apache Pulsar docs for configured runtime for details

name

true

Give your source a good name for later reference. The name must start with a lowercase alphabetic character. It can only contain lowercase alphanumeric characters, and hyphens (kebab-case).

namespace

true

The namespace you’d like the source created under

parallelism

true

1

The number of a Pulsar Source instances to run

processingGuarantees

true

ATLEAST_ONCE

The delivery semantics applied to the Pulsar Sink. Values are 'ATLEAST_ONCE', 'ATMOST_ONCE', 'EFFECTIVELY_ONCE'

producerConfig

false

The custom producer configuration (as a JSON string)

resources

false

The compute resources that need to be allocated per source instance (applicable only to the process)(as a JSON string). Example: {"cpu": 0.25,"disk":1000000000,"ram":500000000}

runtimeFlags

false

A string that encodes options to customize the runtime, see Apache Pulsar docs for configured runtime for details

schemaType

false

The schema type (either a builtin schema like 'avro', 'json', etc.. or custom Schema class name to be used to encode messages emitted from the Pulsar Source

secrets

false

This is a map of secretName(that is how the secret is going to be accessed in the function via context) to an object that encapsulates how the secret is fetched by the underlying secrets provider. The type of an value here can be found by the SecretProviderConfigurator.getSecretObjectType() method

serdeClassName

false

The SerDe classname for the Pulsar Source

tenant

true

The tenant you’d like the source created under

topicName

true

The name of an existing topic in Astra Streaming, where messages will be published to. Should be in the format of [non-]persistent://<tenant>/<namespace>/<topic-name>

Kafka configuration options

These values are provided in the configs area:

Name Type Required Default Description

bootstrapServers

String

true

" " (empty string)

A comma-separated list of host and port pairs for establishing the initial connection to the Kafka cluster.

groupId

String

true

" " (empty string)

A unique string that identifies the group of consumer processes to which this consumer belongs.

fetchMinBytes

long

false

1

The minimum byte expected for each fetch response.

autoCommitEnabled

boolean

false

true

If set to true, the consumer’s offset is periodically committed in the background.
This committed offset is used when the process fails as the position from which a new consumer begins.

autoCommitIntervalMs

long

false

5000

The frequency in milliseconds that the consumer offsets are auto-committed to Kafka if autoCommitEnabled is set to true.

heartbeatIntervalMs

long

false

3000

The interval between heartbeats to the consumer when using Kafka’s group management facilities.
Note: heartbeatIntervalMs must be smaller than sessionTimeoutMs.

sessionTimeoutMs

long

false

30000

The timeout used to detect consumer failures when using Kafka’s group management facility.

topic

String

true

" " (empty string)

The Kafka topic that sends messages to Pulsar.

consumerConfigProperties

Map

false

" " (empty string)

The consumer configuration properties to be passed to consumers.
Note: other properties specified in the connector configuration file take precedence over this configuration.

keyDeserializationClass

String

false

org.apache.kafka.common.serialization.StringDeserializer

The deserializer class for Kafka consumers to deserialize keys.
The deserializer is set by a specific implementation of KafkaAbstractSource.

valueDeserializationClass

String

false

org.apache.kafka.common.serialization.ByteArrayDeserializer

The deserializer class for Kafka consumers to deserialize values.

autoOffsetReset

String

false

earliest

The default offset reset policy.

The Astra Streaming Kafka source connector supports all configuration properties provided by Apache Pulsar. For a complete list, see the Kafka source connector properties.

Was this helpful?

Edit this page

Give Feedback

How can we improve the documentation?

© 2025 DataStax, an IBM Company | Privacy policy | Terms of use | Manage Privacy Choices

Apache, Apache Cassandra, Cassandra, Apache Tomcat, Tomcat, Apache Lucene, Apache Solr, Apache Hadoop, Hadoop, Apache Pulsar, Pulsar, Apache Spark, Spark, Apache TinkerPop, TinkerPop, Apache Kafka and Kafka are either registered trademarks or trademarks of the Apache Software Foundation or its subsidiaries in Canada, the United States and/or other countries. Kubernetes is the registered trademark of the Linux Foundation.

General Inquiries: +1 (650) 389-6000, info@datastax.com