Details
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New Feature
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Status: Open
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Major
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Resolution: Unresolved
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None
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None
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None
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Important
Description
Please provide an official Node.js client for Kafka at feature parity with all of the other officially supported & provided Kafka clients.
It is extremely confusing when it comes to trying to use Kafka in the Node.js ecosystem. There are many clients, some look legitimate (http://kafka.js.org), but some are woefully out of date (many listed at https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/KAFKA/Clients#Clients-Node.js), and others have confusing relationships among them (https://github.com/nodefluent/node-sinek & https://github.com/nodefluent/kafka-streams). Most of them are publicly asking for help. This leaves teams having to waste time trying to figure out which client has the Kafka features they need (mostly talking about streaming here), and which client has high quality and will be around in the future. If the client came directly from this project, those decisions would be made and we could get on about our work.
JavaScript is on the of the most popular languages on the planet, and the Node.js user base is huge – big enough that a Node.js client provided directly by the Kafka team is justified. The list at https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/KAFKA/Clients#Clients-Node.js doesn't even mention what is perhaps the most confidence-inducing Node.js client thanks to its documentation, https://kafka.js.org. The list at https://docs.confluent.io/current/clients/index.html#ak-clients includes an officially-supported Go language client; Go's community is dwarfed by that of Node.js.