[KAFKA-853] Allow OffsetFetchRequest to initialize offsets

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Won't Fix
• Affects Version/s: 0.8.1
• Component/s: core
• Assignee: Balaji Seshadri
• Reporter: David Arthur
• Created: 05/Apr/13 14:29
• Updated: 29/Oct/17 09:25
• Resolved: 29/Oct/17 09:25

Description

It would be nice for the OffsetFetchRequest API to have the option to initialize offsets instead of returning unknown_topic_or_partition. It could mimic the Offsets API by adding the "time" field and then follow the same code path on the server as the Offset API.

In this case, the response would need to a boolean to indicate if the returned offset was initialized or fetched from ZK.

This would simplify the client logic when dealing with new topics.