Zig Kafka Toolkit

A comprehensive Apache Kafka toolkit for Zig with three main components:

Auto-generates type-safe Zig code from Kafka JSON protocol specifications.

Native Zig Kafka client library with Producer, Consumer, and Admin APIs.

librdkafka v2.13.0 compatible shared library for C/C++ applications.

• ✅ Full Protocol Support - Kafka v0-v16 with flexible encoding
• ✅ Zero-Copy Design - Pre-allocated buffers, no runtime allocations
• ✅ Producer API - High-throughput with idempotence support
• ✅ Consumer API - Groups with automatic rebalancing
• ✅ Admin API - Topic and group management
• ✅ C Compatible - Drop-in librdkafka replacement
• ✅ Tested - Kafka 3.8+ and Redpanda 25.3.7

const kafka = @import("kafka");

var client = try kafka.KafkaClient.init(allocator, .{
    .bootstrap_servers = &[_][]const u8{"localhost:9092"},
});
defer client.deinit();

var producer = try client.createProducer(.{});
try producer.send(.{
    .topic = "test",
    .value = "Hello, Kafka!",
});
try producer.flush(5000);

#include <rdkafka.h>

rd_kafka_conf_t *conf = rd_kafka_conf_new();
rd_kafka_conf_set(conf, "bootstrap.servers", "localhost:9092", NULL, 0);

rd_kafka_t *rk = rd_kafka_new(RD_KAFKA_PRODUCER, conf, NULL, 0);
rd_kafka_topic_t *rkt = rd_kafka_topic_new(rk, "test", NULL);

rd_kafka_produce(rkt, -1, 0, "Hello!", 6, NULL, 0, NULL);
rd_kafka_flush(rk, 5000);

git clone https://github.com/yourusername/zig-kafka.git
cd zig-kafka
zig build

Outputs:

• zig-out/bin/kafka-protocol-generator - Code generator
• zig-out/lib/libkafka.a - Zig static library
• zig-out/lib/librdkafka.dylib - C shared library
• zig-out/include/rdkafka.h - C header

• Protocol Generator - Code generation
• SDK Guide - Native Zig API
• C Compatibility - librdkafka API
• Architecture - System design

zig build test              # SDK unit tests
zig build test-integration  # Integration (needs Kafka)
zig build test-c            # C API tests

• Zero-allocation hot paths
• Lock-free concurrency
• 100k+ msgs/sec producer throughput
• Tested against Kafka 3.8 and Redpanda 25.3.7

zig build                   # Build everything
zig build gen -- <spec>     # Run protocol generator

zig build gen -- protocol-gen/specs/ProduceRequest.json output.zig

✅ Complete | 🚧 In Progress | 📋 Planned

• Zig 0.14.1+
• Kafka 2.0+ or Redpanda 22.3+ (for testing)

Contributions welcome! See CONTRIBUTING.md.

Dual-licensed: Apache 2.0 / MIT

• Apache Kafka Protocol specification
• librdkafka, kafka-go, franz-go projects
• TickStream production Kafka codec

Maintained by: Ben Gamble Status: Active Development - Producer/Consumer APIs production-ready