No Install, free polyglot Apache Kafka environment in ephemeral development environment with Node, Java, Python and Go

Click on a button- or this link. Wait about four to five minutes. You will have access to a free cloud based environment with a three-broker-node Apache Kafka Cluster, the AQ HK browser GUI for Kafka and client programs for producing messages and consuming messages in Node, Java, Python and Go. The runtimes and development environments for each of these languages is part of the environment as well.

By clicking this link, you will launch a Gitpod workspace – associated with your Github account. This is free. At the time of writing, the first 50 hours each month (yes, 50 hours again each month) of workspace usage are free. This workspace comes with VS Code in the browser, the language runtimes and build tools as well as Docker and Docker Compose. Once running, the workspace is initialized from the GitHub repo with all sources and this README document, Docker Compose is started to launch the containers for the Apache Kafka Cluster and supporting tooling.

The workspace that launches in your browser looks like this:

This environment comes with a workshop document that guides you through the basics of configuring Kafka Topics with Partitions, producing and consuming messages and creating Kafka client applications in each of the four programming languages.

Resources

GitHub Repo with Gitpod workspace definition and polyglot Kafka workshop materials: https://github.com/lucasjellema/fontys-spring2023-microservices-messaging-kafka