Docker Compose - Simple Kafka

Hey folks! How’s it going? 😄

I’m here to share a simple script I learned while working on a college project using Kafka and Python. Maybe later I’ll make another post showing how I connected everything and created the consumers and producers in Python.

The goal is to keep the setup as simple as possible, since most of the examples I found were a bit complex and included tools I didn’t actually need.

In this final version, I only kept Zookeeper (used by Kafka to coordinate services), Kafka itself, and a dashboard to easily visualize what’s going on — which helps a lot!

You can access the dashboard through your browser at localhost:8080.

🐳 Docker Compose

version: '3'
services:
  zookeeper:
      image: confluentinc/cp-zookeeper:latest
          environment:
                ZOOKEEPER_CLIENT_PORT: 2181
                      ZOOKEEPER_TICK_TIME: 2000
                          ports:
                                - 2181:2181

                                    kafka:
                                        image: confluentinc/cp-kafka:latest
                                            depends_on:
                                                  - zookeeper
                                                      ports:
                                                            - 29092:29092
                                                                environment:
                                                                      KAFKA_BROKER_ID: 1
                                                                            KAFKA_ZOOKEEPER_CONNECT: zookeeper:2181
                                                                                  KAFKA_ADVERTISED_LISTENERS: PLAINTEXT://kafka:9092,PLAINTEXT_HOST://localhost:29092
                                                                                        KAFKA_LISTENER_SECURITY_PROTOCOL_MAP: PLAINTEXT:PLAINTEXT,PLAINTEXT_HOST:PLAINTEXT
                                                                                              KAFKA_INTER_BROKER_LISTENER_NAME: PLAINTEXT
                                                                                                    KAFKA_OFFSETS_TOPIC_REPLICATION_FACTOR: 1

                                                                                                      kafka-ui:
                                                                                                          image: provectuslabs/kafka-ui
                                                                                                              container_name: kafka-ui
                                                                                                                  ports:
                                                                                                                        - "8080:8080"
                                                                                                                            restart: always
                                                                                                                                environment:
                                                                                                                                      - KAFKA_CLUSTERS_0_NAME=local
                                                                                                                                            - KAFKA_CLUSTERS_0_BOOTSTRAPSERVERS=kafka:9092
                                                                                                                                                  - KAFKA_CLUSTERS_0_ZOOKEEPER=zookeeper:2181

🧭 A Few Notes ❗

• The Kafka service is exposed on port 29092, so when connecting, use localhost:29092.
• If you make any changes, check that all services are still connected properly. For example: if you change Kafka’s port, you’ll also need to update it in both kafka-ui and zookeeper.

And that’s all for today, folks! See you next time! 👋