Install kafka

Without docker

download kafka tar file from official site
extract the downloaded tar file and cd to that location
run zookeeper through bin/zookeeper-server-start.sh config/zookeeper.properties
once zookeeper is up and running, in another terminal execute bin/kafka-server-start.sh config/server.properties to start kafka
once kafka is up and running, it need to have one topic before consuming it to emit and read events. for this in a new terminal execute bin/kafka-topics.sh --create --topic quickstart-events --bootstrap-server localhost:9092

this is a one-time action.
this will create a topic named quickstart-events
to list out all the topics, execute bin/kafka-topics.sh --bootstrap-server localhost:9092 --list

With docker

docker-compose.yml:

version: "3.1"

services:
  zookeeper:
    image: wurstmeister/zookeeper
    container_name: zookeeper
    ports:
      - "2181:2181"

  kafka:
    image: wurstmeister/kafka
    container_name: kafka
    ports:
      - "9092:9092"
    environment:
      KAFKA_ADVERTISED_HOST_NAME: localhost
      KAFKA_ZOOKEEPER_CONNECT: zookeeper:2181

place the above yml file in project root folder and run docker compose up in root folder.
this will pull latest zookeeper & kafka packages and run them on their respective ports.