Topics

Learn more about Kafka topics.

In any publish-subscribe system, messages from one publisher, called producers in Kafka, have to find their way to the subscribers, called consumers in Kafka. To achieve this, Kafka introduces the concept of topics, which allow for easy matching between producers and consumers.

A topic is a queue of messages that share similar characteristics. For example, a topic might consist of instant messages from social media or navigation information for users on a web site. Topics are written by one or more producers and read by one or more consumers. A topic is identified by its name. This name is part of a global namespace of that Kafka cluster.

As each producer or consumer connects to the publish-subscribe system, it can read from or write to a specific topic.