Install Kafka on macOS

I really like Homebrew to install stuff on macOS. So in this tutorial I’ll be using Hombrew to install Apache Kafka on macOS.

Install Homebrew:

Open Terminal, paste the following command and then press Return key:

$ /usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

The above command will install Homebrew. Once it is installed, follow the next steps:

1)  Install Java8:

After Homebrew is installed, you can just paste the following commands in Terminal and press Return to install java on macOS:

$ brew tap adoptopenjdk/openjdk
$ brew cask install adoptopenjdk8

The above commands will install openjdk 8. In order to validate the java installation, execute the following command in Terminal:

$ java -version

If you get the following output, it means that java is installed correctly:

openjdk version "1.8.0_212"
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (AdoptOpenJDK)(build 1.8.0_212-b04)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (AdoptOpenJDK)(build 25.212-b04, mixed mode)

2) Install Kafka:

To install Kafka on macOS: open Terminal, paste the following command and then press Return:

$ brew install kafka

The above command will install Kafka along with Zookeeper.

Start Zookeeper:

To start ZooKeeper, paste the following command in the Terminal and press Return:

$ zookeeper-server-start /usr/local/etc/kafka/zookeeper.properties

Once ZooKeeper is started you’ll see something like this in the console:

INFO binding to port 0.0.0.0/0.0.0.0:2181 (org.apache.zookeeper.server.NIOServerCnxnFactory)

Start Kafka:

To start Kafka, paste the following command in another Terminal and press Return:

$ kafka-server-start /usr/local/etc/kafka/server.properties

Once Kafka is started you’ll see something like this in the console:

INFO [KafkaServer id=0] started (kafka.server.KafkaServer)

Create a Kafka topic:

Open another Terminal and execute the following command to create a topic testTopic with 1 partition and 1 replication factor:

kafka-topics --create --zookeeper localhost:2181 --replication-factor 1 --partitions 1 --topic testTopic

Produce messages to the created topic:

In the same Terminal prompt, start a kafka-console-producer and produce some messages:

$ kafka-console-producer --broker-list localhost:9092 --topic testTopic
>Hello
>How are you?

Consume the messages produced by the producer:

Open another Terminal and start a kafka-console-consumer which subscribes to testTopic:

$ kafka-console-consumer --bootstrap-server localhost:9092 --topic testTopic --from-beginning
Hello
How are you?

The messages which are produced by the kafka-console-producer will be visible on the kafka-console-consumer console.

Congratulations on setting up a single broker Kafka setup on macOS!