const consumer = new Kafka({ clientId: 'app-consumer', brokers: ['kafka:9092'] }).consumer({ groupId: 'payment-group' }); await consumer.subscribe({ topic: 'transactions' }); await consumer.run({ eachMessage: processor });

SankalpRaiGambhir

Event Streaming

February 20, 2024

5 min read

Kafka Consumer Groups

Build scalable message processing with Kafka consumer groups and automatic rebalancing

KafkaNode.jsDistributed Systems

The Problem

Processing high-throughput message streams requires parallel processing across multiple consumers while ensuring message ordering and fault tolerance.

The Solution

Use Kafka consumer groups to distribute partitions across multiple consumers, enabling horizontal scaling with automatic rebalancing when consumers join or leave.

Kafka Consumer Group Setup

javascript

const consumer = new Kafka({
  clientId: 'app-consumer',
  brokers: ['kafka:9092']
}).consumer({ groupId: 'payment-group' });

await consumer.subscribe({ topic: 'transactions' });
await consumer.run({ eachMessage: processor });

Key Takeaways

Parallel processing with automatic rebalancing
Consumer groups enable horizontal scaling
Each partition consumed by only one consumer in group
Automatic failover when consumers crash

Common Use Cases

Event-driven microservices

Real-time data pipelines

Log aggregation

Related Resources

Kafka Documentation

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