Introducing the Kafka Consumer: Getting Started with the New Apache Kafka 0.9 Consumer Client

Apache Kafka's new Consumer API, introduced in version 0.9, offers several advantages over its predecessors. It is built on top of a new group coordination protocol and supports manual partition assignment, automatic commits, and asynchronous offset commits. The tutorial provided demonstrates the basic usage of the new consumer, including how to subscribe to topics, handle rebalancing, commit offsets, and inspect consumption progress from the command line. It also covers the synchronous and asynchronous commit APIs, as well as how to use the Consumer API for simple consumers that do not require consumer groups. The tutorial encourages users to try out the new consumer and report any issues they encounter on the Kafka mailing list or JIRA.