{"id":4219,"date":"2020-11-27T12:55:37","date_gmt":"2020-11-27T12:55:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/?p=4219"},"modified":"2020-11-27T13:02:08","modified_gmt":"2020-11-27T13:02:08","slug":"describing-kafka-with-asyncapi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/?p=4219","title":{"rendered":"Describing Kafka with AsyncAPI"},"content":{"rendered":"

In this post, I want to describe how to use AsyncAPI to document how you’re using Apache Kafka. There are already great AsyncAPI “Getting Started”<\/a> guides, but it supports a variety of protocols, and I haven’t found an introduction written specifically from the perspective of a Kafka user.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I’ll start with a description of what AsyncAPI is.<\/p>\n

“an open source initiative … goal is to make working with Event-Driven Architectures as easy as it is to work with REST APIs … from documentation to code generation, from discovery to event management”<\/p>\n

asyncapi.com\/docs<\/a><\/small><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The most obvious initial aspect is that it is a way to document how you’re using Kafka topics, but the impact is broader than that: a consistent approach to documentation enables an ecosystem that includes things like automated code generation and discovery.<\/p>\n


\n\"screenshot<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
what Kafka calls<\/th>\nAsyncAPI describes as<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n
broker<\/td>\nmessage broker<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
producer<\/td>\npublisher<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
consumer<\/td>\nsubscriber<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
event \/ record \/ message<\/td>\nmessage<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
topic<\/td>\nchannel<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Most terminology in AsyncAPI will be recognizable to Kafka users. Describing Kafka Producers as “publishers” and Kafka Consumers as “subscribers” isn’t that unusual, and something I’ve heard people do before, particularly for users who’ve come from messaging worlds like JMS.<\/p>\n

Perhaps more unexpected is that, in AsyncAPI, Kafka topics are described as “channels”.<\/p>\n

\"screenshot<\/a><\/p>\n