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Consuming Kafka Messages with Confluent REST Proxy

The Confluent REST Proxy provides a "RESTful interface" on top of Kafka, allowing you to produce and consume messages using simple HTTP requests. In this lab, you will have the opportunity to interact with the REST proxy by consuming some existing messages. This will give you some hands-on experience with the requests necessary for consuming Kafka data using REST.

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Lab Info
Level
Intermediate
Last updated
Sep 21, 2025
Duration
30m

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Table of Contents
  1. Challenge

    Provide the Number of Apples Sold in the Last Week
    1. Create a new consumer and consumer_instance:
    curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/vnd.kafka.v2+json" 
      --data '{"name": "sales_consumer_instance", "format": "json", "auto.offset.reset": "earliest"}' 
      http://localhost:8082/consumers/sales_json_consumer
    
    1. Subscribe the consumer to the weekly_sales topic:
    curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/vnd.kafka.v2+json" --data '{"topics":["weekly_sales"]}' 
      http://localhost:8082/consumers/sales_json_consumer/instances/sales_consumer_instance/subscription
    
    1. Consume the messages:
    curl -X GET -H "Accept: application/vnd.kafka.json.v2+json" 
      http://localhost:8082/consumers/sales_json_consumer/instances/sales_consumer_instance/records
    
    1. Locate the latest record with a key of apples and copy its value.
    2. Edit the output file:
    vi /home/cloud_user/output/apple_sales.txt
    
    1. Paste in the value from the latest apples record and save the file.
  2. Challenge

    Provide the Current Quarterly Balance for Product Purchases
    1. Create a new consumer and consumer_instance:
    curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/vnd.kafka.v2+json" 
      --data '{"name": "balance_consumer_instance", "format": "json", "auto.offset.reset": "earliest"}' 
      http://localhost:8082/consumers/balance_json_consumer
    
    1. Subscribe the consumer to the quarterly_purchases topic:
    curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/vnd.kafka.v2+json" --data '{"topics":["quarterly_purchases"]}' 
      http://localhost:8082/consumers/balance_json_consumer/instances/balance_consumer_instance/subscription
    
    1. Consume the messages:
    curl -X GET -H "Accept: application/vnd.kafka.json.v2+json" 
      http://localhost:8082/consumers/balance_json_consumer/instances/balance_consumer_instance/records
    
    1. Locate the latest record and copy its value.
    2. Edit the output file:
    vi /home/cloud_user/output/quarterly_balance.txt
    
    1. Paste in the value from the latest record and save the file.
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