Kafka on Joel Hanson

Kafka MCP Server

joelhanson025@gmail.com (Joel Hanson) — Sat, 07 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Expose Kafka cluster operations as LLM-accessible tools via the Model Context Protocol.

Kafka Common Problems

joelhanson025@gmail.com (Joel Hanson) — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Operational playbooks for common Kafka production issues — symptoms, diagnosis steps, and fixes you can walk with a customer.

bijou64

joelhanson025@gmail.com (Joel Hanson) — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Shrink Kafka integer payloads with a compact encoding library for Java/Kafka apps.

Building an MCP Server for Your Kafka Cluster

joelhanson025@gmail.com (Joel Hanson) — Sat, 07 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A step‑by‑step guide to using FastMCP and the MCP protocol to expose Kafka operations (topic management, produce/consume, troubleshooting) as LLM‑accessible tools.

Stream Wars

joelhanson025@gmail.com (Joel Hanson) — Sun, 01 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A real-time multiplayer tap battle that turns every click into a Kafka event you can inspect.

When One Kafka Partition Takes All the Heat

joelhanson025@gmail.com (Joel Hanson) — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0530

Hot partitions show up as lag on one partition, a stressed broker, and consumers that do nothing when you scale out. Confirm the skew, fix the key, and recreate it locally with a Docker Compose demo.

Send Half the Bytes Over the Network: Cut Kafka Integer Payloads with Bijou64

joelhanson025@gmail.com (Joel Hanson) — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Every Kafka record with a Long value you produce sends 8 bytes over the wire, even when the value is 42. Bijou64 encodes integers in 1–3 bytes with drop-in serializers, cutting network transfer and replication traffic on integer-heavy topics by up to 50% or more.

Shrink Kafka int payloads with bijou64

joelhanson025@gmail.com (Joel Hanson) — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Variable-length unsigned 64-bit ints — small numbers stay small on the wire.

Stream Wars: A Simple Game to Explain Kafka

joelhanson025@gmail.com (Joel Hanson) — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 12:00:00 +0530

I built Stream Wars as a tiny tap game to demo how Kafka works, by turning every tap in the browser into a real Kafka event you can inspect.

SSE Kafka Connector: Stream Real-time Events into Kafka

joelhanson025@gmail.com (Joel Hanson) — Wed, 27 Aug 2025 21:15:47 +0530

The Problem: Getting Real-time Data into Kafka
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Have you ever tried to stream Wikipedia changes or other real-time Server-Sent Events (SSE) updates into Kafka? If you have, you probably wrote custom Kafka producer and consumer code to handle these events, managed reconnections, and built your own error handling.

Mastering Integration Testing for Kafka Connectors: A Complete Guide

joelhanson025@gmail.com (Joel Hanson) — Sun, 13 Jul 2025 21:40:00 +0530

Integration testing is crucial for Kafka Connectors to ensure they work correctly with external systems. This guide provides a comprehensive approach to setting up and executing integration tests for Kafka Connectors, covering everything from environment setup to best practices for testing source and sink connectors.

Creating Tombstone Records Using kafka-console-producer.sh: A Quick Guide

joelhanson025@gmail.com (Joel Hanson) — Tue, 22 Apr 2025 16:03:27 +0530

A practical guide to creating tombstone records for Kafka compacted topics using the kafka-console-producer.sh command-line tool with the null marker feature

Kafka tombstones via console producer

joelhanson025@gmail.com (Joel Hanson) — Tue, 22 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Key + null value = tombstone. Use null.marker so the CLI can send it.

Build Custom Kafka Connectors Fast with This Open-Source Template

joelhanson025@gmail.com (Joel Hanson) — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 16:19:42 +0530

Apache Kafka is a powerful distributed event streaming platform, and Kafka Connect makes it easy to integrate Kafka with external systems. While many pre-built connectors exist, real-world applications often need custom connectors tailored for proprietary systems, custom logic, or advanced error handling. That’s where this production-ready template comes in—it removes the boilerplate and gives you everything you need to build, test, and deploy connectors with ease.

Kafka on Joel Hanson

Kafka MCP Server

Kafka Common Problems

bijou64

Building an MCP Server for Your Kafka Cluster

Stream Wars

When One Kafka Partition Takes All the Heat

Send Half the Bytes Over the Network: Cut Kafka Integer Payloads with Bijou64

Shrink Kafka int payloads with bijou64

Stream Wars: A Simple Game to Explain Kafka

SSE Kafka Connector: Stream Real-time Events into Kafka

The Problem: Getting Real-time Data into Kafka #

Mastering Integration Testing for Kafka Connectors: A Complete Guide

Creating Tombstone Records Using kafka-console-producer.sh: A Quick Guide

Kafka tombstones via console producer

Build Custom Kafka Connectors Fast with This Open-Source Template

The Problem: Getting Real-time Data into Kafka
#