{"id":4506,"date":"2021-10-23T13:00:34","date_gmt":"2021-10-23T13:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/?p=4506"},"modified":"2021-10-23T14:16:09","modified_gmt":"2021-10-23T14:16:09","slug":"from-bytes-to-objects-describing-kafka-events","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/?p=4506","title":{"rendered":"From bytes to objects: describing Kafka events"},"content":{"rendered":"

The recording of the talk that Kate Stanley<\/a> and I gave at Kafka Summit Americas<\/a> is now available.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Events stored in Kafka are just bytes, this is one of the reasons Kafka is so flexible. But when developing a producer or consumer you want objects, not bytes. Documenting and defining events provides a common way to discuss and agree on an approach to using Kafka. It also informs developers how to consume events without needing access to the developers responsible for producing events.<\/p>\n

In our talk, we introduced the most popular formats for documenting events that flow through Kafka, such as AsyncAPI, Avro, CloudEvents, JSON schemas, and Protobuf.<\/p>\n

We discussed the differences between the approaches and how to decide on a documentation strategy. Alongside the formats, we also touched on the tooling available for the different approaches. Tools for testing and code generation can make a big difference to your day-to-day developer experience.<\/p>\n

The talk was aimed at developers who maybe aren’t already documenting their Kafka events or who wanted to see other approaches.<\/p>\n