Note: This repo complements the blog post on Interfacing Jython with Kafka 0.8.x. It can also be used as a bare minimum to interface Kafka with Jython.

You need to have the following installed on your system.

• Java SDK
• Python
• virtualenv and virtualenvwrapper
• Kafka 0.9.x or Kafka 0.8.x (assuming you know how to setup and run Kafka)

This is a bare-bones repositiory for working with this tutorial. To keep things at a minimum, Kafka 0.9.1 binaries and Jython 2.7.0 installer are included within this repo. This means that you can directly run Kafa and Zookeeper after cloning this.

Jython is fully compatible with virtualenv and tools such as pip and setting a virtualenv with Jython as the interpretter is pretty straightforward.

Jython can be installed using the GUI or console. For GUI, execute the jar and follow the steps. For installing it via console, you can use the following command to start with:

java -jar jython_installer-2.7.0.jar --console

Make a note of the location where you have installed Jython.

cd into the directory where you cloned the repo and create a virtualenv using Jython as your interpretter by using the following:

mkvirtualenv -p /jython-installation-path/jython2.7.0/bin/jython -a kafka-jython kafka-jython

You should be in the repo directory right now with your virtualenv already activated.

The project layout is as follows:

.
├── bin
│   └── windows
├── build
├── config
├── examples
│   └── src
│       └── main
│           ├── java
│           │   └── kafkajython
│           └── python
│               └── consumers
├── libs
└── requirements

• bin: Contains helper scripts from Kafka and other binaries.
• build: This is where your compiled files would go.
• config: Various kafka configs.
• examples: Jython and Java code for this tutorial.
• libs: Kafka jars which we will use as dependencies.
• requirements: Python library dependencies.

Once in the repo directory, install all Python dependencies using:

pip install -r requirements/development.txt

Since one of our examples depends on calling Java class directly from Jython, we need to compile it first using:

javac -cp ".:/your-directory/kafka-jython/libs/*" -d build examples/src/main/java/kafkajython/Consumer*

We tell java compiler to include all the dependencies in the lib directory while compiling and put the compiled files in the build directory.

To execute the "high level" Java example using Jython:

jython -J-cp "/your-directory/Projects/kafka-jython/libs/*:/your-directory/Projects/kafka-jython/build:." examples/src/main/python/java_interfaced_jython_consumer.py

To execute the pure Jython implementation of the coordinated consumer example, do:

jython -J-cp "/Users/rafay/Projects/kafka-jython/libs/*" examples/src/main/python/pure_jython_consumer.py

Apache License Version 2.0

Please email any bugs or feature requests at: mrafayaleem[at]gmail.com

Mohammad Rafay Aleem