Chapter 4. Consumer configuration properties

Deserializer class for key that implements the org.apache.kafka.common.serialization.Deserializer interface.

Deserializer class for value that implements the org.apache.kafka.common.serialization.Deserializer interface.

A list of host/port pairs used to establish the initial connection to the Kafka cluster. Clients use this list to bootstrap and discover the full set of Kafka brokers. While the order of servers in the list does not matter, we recommend including more than one server to ensure resilience if any servers are down. This list does not need to contain the entire set of brokers, as Kafka clients automatically manage and update connections to the cluster efficiently. This list must be in the form host1:port1,host2:port2,…​.

The minimum amount of data the server should return for a fetch request. If insufficient data is available the request will wait for that much data to accumulate before answering the request. The default setting of 1 byte means that fetch requests are answered as soon as that many byte(s) of data is available or the fetch request times out waiting for data to arrive. Setting this to a larger value will cause the server to wait for larger amounts of data to accumulate which can improve server throughput a bit at the cost of some additional latency.

A unique string that identifies the consumer group this consumer belongs to. This property is required if the consumer uses either the group management functionality by using subscribe(topic) or the Kafka-based offset management strategy.

The group protocol consumer should use. We currently support "classic" or "consumer". If "consumer" is specified, then the consumer group protocol will be used. Otherwise, the classic group protocol will be used.

The expected time between heartbeats to the consumer coordinator when using Kafka’s group management facilities. Heartbeats are used to ensure that the consumer’s session stays active and to facilitate rebalancing when new consumers join or leave the group. The value must be set lower than session.timeout.ms, but typically should be set no higher than 1/3 of that value. It can be adjusted even lower to control the expected time for normal rebalances.

The maximum amount of data per-partition the server will return. Records are fetched in batches by the consumer. If the first record batch in the first non-empty partition of the fetch is larger than this limit, the batch will still be returned to ensure that the consumer can make progress. The maximum record batch size accepted by the broker is defined via message.max.bytes (broker config) or max.message.bytes (topic config). See fetch.max.bytes for limiting the consumer request size.

The timeout used to detect client failures when using Kafka’s group management facility. The client sends periodic heartbeats to indicate its liveness to the broker. If no heartbeats are received by the broker before the expiration of this session timeout, then the broker will remove this client from the group and initiate a rebalance. Note that the value must be in the allowable range as configured in the broker configuration by group.min.session.timeout.ms and group.max.session.timeout.ms. Note that this configuration is not supported when group.protocol is set to "consumer".

The password of the private key in the key store file or the PEM key specified in 'ssl.keystore.key'.

Certificate chain in the format specified by 'ssl.keystore.type'. Default SSL engine factory supports only PEM format with a list of X.509 certificates.

Private key in the format specified by 'ssl.keystore.type'. Default SSL engine factory supports only PEM format with PKCS#8 keys. If the key is encrypted, key password must be specified using 'ssl.key.password'.

The location of the key store file. This is optional for client and can be used for two-way authentication for client.

The store password for the key store file. This is optional for client and only needed if 'ssl.keystore.location' is configured. Key store password is not supported for PEM format.

Trusted certificates in the format specified by 'ssl.truststore.type'. Default SSL engine factory supports only PEM format with X.509 certificates.

The location of the trust store file.

The password for the trust store file. If a password is not set, trust store file configured will still be used, but integrity checking is disabled. Trust store password is not supported for PEM format.

Allow automatic topic creation on the broker when subscribing to or assigning a topic. A topic being subscribed to will be automatically created only if the broker allows for it using auto.create.topics.enable broker configuration. This configuration must be set to true when using brokers older than 0.11.0.

What to do when there is no initial offset in Kafka or if the current offset does not exist any more on the server (e.g. because that data has been deleted):

Controls how the client uses DNS lookups. If set to use_all_dns_ips, connect to each returned IP address in sequence until a successful connection is established. After a disconnection, the next IP is used. Once all IPs have been used once, the client resolves the IP(s) from the hostname again (both the JVM and the OS cache DNS name lookups, however). If set to resolve_canonical_bootstrap_servers_only, resolve each bootstrap address into a list of canonical names. After the bootstrap phase, this behaves the same as use_all_dns_ips.

Close idle connections after the number of milliseconds specified by this config.

Specifies the timeout (in milliseconds) for client APIs. This configuration is used as the default timeout for all client operations that do not specify a timeout parameter.

If true the consumer’s offset will be periodically committed in the background.

Whether internal topics matching a subscribed pattern should be excluded from the subscription. It is always possible to explicitly subscribe to an internal topic.

The maximum amount of data the server should return for a fetch request. Records are fetched in batches by the consumer, and if the first record batch in the first non-empty partition of the fetch is larger than this value, the record batch will still be returned to ensure that the consumer can make progress. As such, this is not a absolute maximum. The maximum record batch size accepted by the broker is defined via message.max.bytes (broker config) or max.message.bytes (topic config). Note that the consumer performs multiple fetches in parallel.

A unique identifier of the consumer instance provided by the end user. Only non-empty strings are permitted. If set, the consumer is treated as a static member, which means that only one instance with this ID is allowed in the consumer group at any time. This can be used in combination with a larger session timeout to avoid group rebalances caused by transient unavailability (e.g. process restarts). If not set, the consumer will join the group as a dynamic member, which is the traditional behavior.

The name of the server-side assignor to use. If not specified, the group coordinator will pick the first assignor defined in the broker config group.consumer.assignors.This configuration is applied only if group.protocol is set to "consumer".

Controls how to read messages written transactionally. If set to read_committed, consumer.poll() will only return transactional messages which have been committed. If set to read_uncommitted (the default), consumer.poll() will return all messages, even transactional messages which have been aborted. Non-transactional messages will be returned unconditionally in either mode.

Messages will always be returned in offset order. Hence, in read_committed mode, consumer.poll() will only return messages up to the last stable offset (LSO), which is the one less than the offset of the first open transaction. In particular any messages appearing after messages belonging to ongoing transactions will be withheld until the relevant transaction has been completed. As a result, read_committed consumers will not be able to read up to the high watermark when there are in flight transactions.

 Further, when in `read_committed` the seekToEnd method will return the LSO
.

 Further, when in `read_committed` the seekToEnd method will return the LSO
.

The maximum delay between invocations of poll() when using consumer group management. This places an upper bound on the amount of time that the consumer can be idle before fetching more records. If poll() is not called before expiration of this timeout, then the consumer is considered failed and the group will rebalance in order to reassign the partitions to another member. For consumers using a non-null group.instance.id which reach this timeout, partitions will not be immediately reassigned. Instead, the consumer will stop sending heartbeats and partitions will be reassigned after expiration of session.timeout.ms. This mirrors the behavior of a static consumer which has shutdown.

The maximum number of records returned in a single call to poll(). Note, that max.poll.records does not impact the underlying fetching behavior. The consumer will cache the records from each fetch request and returns them incrementally from each poll.

A list of class names or class types, ordered by preference, of supported partition assignment strategies that the client will use to distribute partition ownership amongst consumer instances when group management is used. Available options are:

The size of the TCP receive buffer (SO_RCVBUF) to use when reading data. If the value is -1, the OS default will be used.

The configuration controls the maximum amount of time the client will wait for the response of a request. If the response is not received before the timeout elapses the client will resend the request if necessary or fail the request if retries are exhausted.

The fully qualified name of a SASL client callback handler class that implements the AuthenticateCallbackHandler interface.

JAAS login context parameters for SASL connections in the format used by JAAS configuration files. JAAS configuration file format is described here. The format for the value is: loginModuleClass controlFlag (optionName=optionValue)*;. For brokers, the config must be prefixed with listener prefix and SASL mechanism name in lower-case. For example, listener.name.sasl_ssl.scram-sha-256.sasl.jaas.config=com.example.ScramLoginModule required;.

The Kerberos principal name that Kafka runs as. This can be defined either in Kafka’s JAAS config or in Kafka’s config.

The fully qualified name of a SASL login callback handler class that implements the AuthenticateCallbackHandler interface. For brokers, login callback handler config must be prefixed with listener prefix and SASL mechanism name in lower-case. For example, listener.name.sasl_ssl.scram-sha-256.sasl.login.callback.handler.class=com.example.CustomScramLoginCallbackHandler.

The fully qualified name of a class that implements the Login interface. For brokers, login config must be prefixed with listener prefix and SASL mechanism name in lower-case. For example, listener.name.sasl_ssl.scram-sha-256.sasl.login.class=com.example.CustomScramLogin.

SASL mechanism used for client connections. This may be any mechanism for which a security provider is available. GSSAPI is the default mechanism.

The OAuth/OIDC provider URL from which the provider’s JWKS (JSON Web Key Set) can be retrieved. The URL can be HTTP(S)-based or file-based. If the URL is HTTP(S)-based, the JWKS data will be retrieved from the OAuth/OIDC provider via the configured URL on broker startup. All then-current keys will be cached on the broker for incoming requests. If an authentication request is received for a JWT that includes a "kid" header claim value that isn’t yet in the cache, the JWKS endpoint will be queried again on demand. However, the broker polls the URL every sasl.oauthbearer.jwks.endpoint.refresh.ms milliseconds to refresh the cache with any forthcoming keys before any JWT requests that include them are received. If the URL is file-based, the broker will load the JWKS file from a configured location on startup. In the event that the JWT includes a "kid" header value that isn’t in the JWKS file, the broker will reject the JWT and authentication will fail.

The URL for the OAuth/OIDC identity provider. If the URL is HTTP(S)-based, it is the issuer’s token endpoint URL to which requests will be made to login based on the configuration in sasl.jaas.config. If the URL is file-based, it specifies a file containing an access token (in JWT serialized form) issued by the OAuth/OIDC identity provider to use for authorization.

Protocol used to communicate with brokers.

The size of the TCP send buffer (SO_SNDBUF) to use when sending data. If the value is -1, the OS default will be used.

The maximum amount of time the client will wait for the socket connection to be established. The connection setup timeout will increase exponentially for each consecutive connection failure up to this maximum. To avoid connection storms, a randomization factor of 0.2 will be applied to the timeout resulting in a random range between 20% below and 20% above the computed value.

The amount of time the client will wait for the socket connection to be established. If the connection is not built before the timeout elapses, clients will close the socket channel. This value is the initial backoff value and will increase exponentially for each consecutive connection failure, up to the socket.connection.setup.timeout.max.ms value.

The list of protocols enabled for SSL connections. The default is 'TLSv1.2,TLSv1.3'. This means that clients and servers will prefer TLSv1.3 if both support it and fallback to TLSv1.2 otherwise (assuming both support at least TLSv1.2). This default should be fine for most use cases. Also see the config documentation for ssl.protocol to understand how it can impact the TLS version negotiation behavior.

The file format of the key store file. This is optional for client. The values currently supported by the default ssl.engine.factory.class are [JKS, PKCS12, PEM].

The SSL protocol used to generate the SSLContext. The default is 'TLSv1.3', which should be fine for most use cases. A typical alternative to the default is 'TLSv1.2'. Allowed values for this config are dependent on the JVM. Clients using the defaults for this config and 'ssl.enabled.protocols' will downgrade to 'TLSv1.2' if the server does not support 'TLSv1.3'. If this config is set to 'TLSv1.2', however, clients will not use 'TLSv1.3' even if it is one of the values in ssl.enabled.protocols and the server only supports 'TLSv1.3'.

The name of the security provider used for SSL connections. Default value is the default security provider of the JVM.

The file format of the trust store file. The values currently supported by the default ssl.engine.factory.class are [JKS, PKCS12, PEM].

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

Automatically check the CRC32 of the records consumed. This ensures no on-the-wire or on-disk corruption to the messages occurred. This check adds some overhead, so it may be disabled in cases seeking extreme performance.

An id string to pass to the server when making requests. The purpose of this is to be able to track the source of requests beyond just ip/port by allowing a logical application name to be included in server-side request logging.

A rack identifier for this client. This can be any string value which indicates where this client is physically located. It corresponds with the broker config 'broker.rack'.

Whether to enable pushing of client metrics to the cluster, if the cluster has a client metrics subscription which matches this client.

The maximum amount of time the server will block before answering the fetch request there isn’t sufficient data to immediately satisfy the requirement given by fetch.min.bytes. This config is used only for local log fetch. To tune the remote fetch maximum wait time, please refer to 'remote.fetch.max.wait.ms' broker config.

A list of classes to use as interceptors. Implementing the org.apache.kafka.clients.consumer.ConsumerInterceptor interface allows you to intercept (and possibly mutate) records received by the consumer. By default, there are no interceptors.

The period of time in milliseconds after which we force a refresh of metadata even if we haven’t seen any partition leadership changes to proactively discover any new brokers or partitions.

If a client configured to rebootstrap using metadata.recovery.strategy=rebootstrap is unable to obtain metadata from any of the brokers in the last known metadata for this interval, client repeats the bootstrap process using bootstrap.servers configuration.

Controls how the client recovers when none of the brokers known to it is available. If set to none, the client fails. If set to rebootstrap, the client repeats the bootstrap process using bootstrap.servers. Rebootstrapping is useful when a client communicates with brokers so infrequently that the set of brokers may change entirely before the client refreshes metadata. Metadata recovery is triggered when all last-known brokers appear unavailable simultaneously. Brokers appear unavailable when disconnected and no current retry attempt is in-progress. Consider increasing reconnect.backoff.ms and reconnect.backoff.max.ms and decreasing socket.connection.setup.timeout.ms and socket.connection.setup.timeout.max.ms for the client. Rebootstrap is also triggered if connection cannot be established to any of the brokers for metadata.recovery.rebootstrap.trigger.ms milliseconds or if server requests rebootstrap.

A list of classes to use as metrics reporters. Implementing the org.apache.kafka.common.metrics.MetricsReporter interface allows plugging in classes that will be notified of new metric creation.

The number of samples maintained to compute metrics.