
Show HN: Kowl – An Open Source WebUI for Apache Kafka with a good UI and UX - weeco
https://github.com/cloudhut/kowl
======
abledon
CMAK, AKHQ, Kafdrop, Kowl, Conduktor, Kafkatool etc.... why are there so many
attempts to build a kafka UI? Does each one have its own use case? I'd think
that something as large as "Kafka" in the software ecosystem would have a goto
defacto standard UI for managing it.

~~~
weeco
You are absolutely right, there are many options which we looked at before we
began with the project. None of existing solutions provided the features we
needed:

Authentication and authorization to meet our compliance needs, a satisfactory
UI/UX, message streaming with JavaScript filters and a couple more features.
We thought we can do better and just started hacking something. There's a lot
more to come. I'll create a blog post describing in more detail why we've
created Kowl.

------
tutfbhuf
Our company uses
[https://github.com/obsidiandynamics/kafdrop](https://github.com/obsidiandynamics/kafdrop)
it's FOSS. It can also handle AVRO and PROTOBUF messages.

~~~
pridkett
Does your company use both Avro and Protobuf for message serialization? Most
places tend to standardize with one or the other and I’m wondering if there is
a use case for both.

~~~
tutfbhuf
We use Avro only, just wanted to mention that Protobuf is also supported.

------
klden007
I also can recommend
[https://github.com/tchiotludo/akhq](https://github.com/tchiotludo/akhq) for
basic Kafka management

------
jasonvorhe
This looks dope, I'll check it out after my vacation for our Kafka clusters. I
haven't yet found a decent web interface for Kafka. For cluster overview
there's cruise-control but apart from that it all feels too messy and the UX
is often more of an afterthought. Thanks for doing this. I hope your
enterprise features provide you with sufficient revenue to keep this going. If
not, maybe offer a donation button somewhere?

~~~
weeco
We don't have any expectations or force to make money with Kowl. Besides that
we already use Kowl at our company where engineers use it with joy in their
daily business. We don't only get valuable feedback from colleagues who use
Kowl, but our employer does also sponsor our efforts with working time. If it
ultimately turns out to be not profitable at all we will simply open source
everything I guess.

------
fourseventy
I was looking for something like this about a year ago but no open source
solution existed. Thank you!

~~~
pandemic_region
you must not have looked for long, most of the other OSS tools mentioned in
this thread exist for several years already.

~~~
secondcoming
These ones (stolen from another comment)?

> CMAK, AKHQ, Kafdrop, Kowl, Conduktor, Kafkatool

Maybe if they had been given better, more descriptive, names they'd have been
easier to fit

~~~
weeco
Some of these had more descriptive names, but the apache software foundation
doesn't allow names with "Kafka" as part of the name because it's a protected
trademark apparently.

~~~
tchiotludo
I confirm ! I need to rename KafkaHQ to AKHQ :
[https://twitter.com/akhq_io/status/1240037275565727744](https://twitter.com/akhq_io/status/1240037275565727744)
Apache Committee ask to rename the project as CMAK and others ...

------
siddharthgoel88
Just wondering if there is also a plan to support PROTOBUF? Kowl looks to have
a pretty decent UI. Thanks for making this one.

Thanks to @tutbhuf for mention of kafdrop. Will check it out as well.

------
mwaitjmp
This looks great. Does it support avro via the schema registry?

~~~
bgorman
It would be great to have this info on the readme

~~~
weeco
Agreed, added!

------
mrweasel
Very nice, I think we’ll give it a shot on our test cluster tomorrow, we been
looking for something like this, both for ourself, but also for a customer.

------
larsroholm
Just tried using it a bit. Seems nice and fast. But I am really lacking the
ability to inspect message headers. Is that on the roadmap?

~~~
weeco
Actually we haven't thought about message headers as we haven't used them for
so long. Please submit an issue in GitHub and it would be awesome if you
describe how you are using headers (what do you use them for?).

I think we should definitely support that.

------
tspann
I use Streams Messenging Manager supports schema registry for avro. Also
includes alerts and many metrics and stats

------
mrorange27
I will stick to using
[https://github.com/deviceinsight/kafkactl](https://github.com/deviceinsight/kafkactl)
in the shell.

~~~
taf2
Slightly off topic but for the shell in the example what did they export PS1
to get the nice looking solid background color for the host name and current
working directory?

~~~
eat_veggies
Looks like some type of powerline plugin for their shell

[https://github.com/b-ryan/powerline-
shell](https://github.com/b-ryan/powerline-shell)

~~~
fwip
Yep, that's powerline (or an alternative inspired by) with an improperly-
patched font (which is why it's got the box characters).

------
Nikhil833032
Yes that is really helpful

