Kayrock

Idiomatic Elixir interface to the Kafka protocol.

This library provides serialization and deserialization for all Kafka protocol messages, based on kafka_protocol for Erlang. It is built to work with KafkaEx though there is no reason why it couldn't be used elsewhere.

Installation

Add kayrock to your list of dependencies in mix.exs:

def deps do
  [
    {:kayrock, "~> 1.0"}
  ]
end

Requirements

• Elixir 1.14 or later
• Erlang/OTP 24.3 or later

Basic Architecture and Usage

Kayrock generates structs for every version of every message in the Kafka protocol. It does this by converting the Erlang-based schema descriptions in :kpro_schema from the kafka_protocol library and is therefore limited to messages and versions included there.

Each request message has a serializer (that generates iodata), and each response message has a deserializer. There is also a protocol, Kayrock.Request, that has an implementation created for each request.

The generated structs are namespaced as follows: Kayrock.<API>.V<version>.[Request|Response]

For example:

• Kayrock.Fetch.V4.Request
• Kayrock.Produce.V1.Response
• Kayrock.Metadata.V1.Request

Example Usage

alias Kayrock.Request

# Create a request
request = %Kayrock.ApiVersions.V1.Request{
  client_id: "my_client",
  correlation_id: 0
}

# Serialize to wire protocol (iodata)
wire_protocol = Request.serialize(request)

# ... send wire_protocol over your connection ...
# ... receive binary response ...

# Deserialize the response
response_deserializer = Request.response_deserializer(request)
{deserialized_resp, _rest} = response_deserializer.(binary_response)

# deserialized_resp is now a %Kayrock.ApiVersions.V1.Response{}

Message Compression

Kayrock supports four compression formats:

Format	Built-in	Dependency Required
gzip	Yes	None
snappy	No	{:snappyer, "~> 1.2"}
lz4	No	{:lz4b, "~> 0.0.13"}
zstd	OTP 27+	{:ezstd, "~> 1.0"} (for OTP < 27)

Installing Compression Dependencies

Add the compression libraries you need to your mix.exs:

def deps do
  [
    {:kayrock, "~> 1.0"},

    # Add compression libraries as needed:
    {:snappyer, "~> 1.2"},     # For Snappy compression
    {:lz4b, "~> 0.0.13"},      # For LZ4 compression
    {:ezstd, "~> 1.0"},        # For Zstandard (OTP < 27)
  ]
end

Zstandard Support

Zstandard compression is available via:

1. OTP 27+: Native :zstd module (no dependency needed)
2. OTP < 27: Add {:ezstd, "~> 1.0"} to your dependencies

Code Generation

This repo includes a mix task, mix gen.kafka_protocol, that produces the code in lib/generated. The generated code is checked into the repository to simplify usage. End users should not need to run the mix task unless they are doing development on Kayrock itself.

Relationship to Other Libraries

Kayrock uses only the kpro_schema module from kafka_protocol. kafka_protocol provides quite a lot of functionality (especially when used as part of brod). This repo limits the integration surface because:

1. kafka_protocol produces Erlang records whereas Kayrock provides Elixir structs
2. kafka_protocol provides network-level implementation whereas Kayrock only provides serialization and deserialization
3. kpro_schema is itself automatically generated from the Java source code of Kafka, meaning that Kayrock could feasibly reproduce this without needing an intermediate dependency

Built-in Client (Development Only)

This repo includes a lightweight Kafka client implementation for development and testing purposes.

Warning: The built-in client (Kayrock.Client) is NOT production-ready. For production usage, please use:

• KafkaEx
• brod

Testing

Kayrock includes both unit tests and integration tests.

Unit Tests

mix test

Integration Tests

Integration tests require Docker. We use testcontainers to run a Kafka cluster.

# Requires Docker to be running
mix test.integration

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for development setup and guidelines.

License

MIT License - see LICENSE.txt for details.