Purpose

User friendly implementation of ideas behind "Kafka".

Quick start

Download (change "darwin" to "linux" as needed):

curl -Os https://storage.googleapis.com/peakunicorn/bin/amd64/darwin/hbuf
chmod 0755 hbuf

Run:

./hbuf

Produce message:

curl localhost:8080/topics/foo -d'bar'

Consume message:

curl localhost:8080/topics/foo/next

Stats:

curl localhost:8080/stats

Get more info (this will show all available routes and info about them):

curl localhost:8080 | jq .

CLI

hbuf -h built in tools:

• producer
• consumer
• load generator ("stress")

Reason

I see Kafka not as a message queue, but as an append-only file; a place where data (usually logs of some kind) gets dumped, and then read and re-read at leisure. A semi-permanent data store; a buffer. I find this hugely useful, especially if messages can be assigned unique IDs, which allows for idempotent consumption.