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Kafka Live gives you a real-time window into any Kafka topic accessible through your configured connectors. You can either stream new messages as they arrive over a live WebSocket connection, or page back through recent message history in Fetch mode. Either way, you can click any message to inspect its full payload, headers, partition, and offset without leaving Devset. Open Kafka Live at http://localhost:8082/kafka-live.

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Connecting to a Topic

1

Select a connector

In the Scope Bar at the top of the page, open the Connector dropdown and choose the Kafka connector you want to use. Only connectors configured in your Devset instance appear here.
2

Select a topic

Once a connector is selected, the Topic dropdown populates with the topics available on that broker. Choose the topic you want to observe.
3

Choose a mode

Toggle between the two viewing modes:
  • Live — streams new messages as they arrive on the topic.
  • Fetch — loads recent messages from the topic’s existing log.

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Live Mode

In Live mode, Devset opens a WebSocket connection to the broker and appends each new message to the list as it arrives. The message list scrolls automatically so the most recent message is always visible. Live mode is ideal for verifying that a workflow run or a Message Dispatch send is actually producing messages on the expected topic.
Open Kafka Live in Live mode in one browser tab while running a workflow in another. You will see dispatched events appear on the topic the moment they are published, giving you instant end-to-end confirmation.

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Fetch Mode

Fetch mode loads the most recent messages already present in the topic log. Use it when you need to inspect what was published before you opened the page, or when you want to step through historical messages methodically.
1

Enter Fetch mode

Toggle the mode selector in the Scope Bar to Fetch. Devset loads the most recent batch of messages automatically.
2

Load older messages

Click Load Older at the bottom of the message list to fetch the next page of earlier messages. Devset uses cursor-based pagination so each load retrieves the batch immediately preceding the oldest message currently visible.
Fetch mode loads messages in pages of 50 at a time. Use the search and filter bar to narrow results while paging through a high-volume topic.

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Searching and Filtering Messages

The Search/Filter Bar beneath the Scope Bar lets you narrow the message list by keyword. Type any string to filter messages whose payload or headers contain a matching value. Results update as you type, hiding non-matching entries from the list without re-fetching from the broker.

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Inspecting Message Payloads

Click any message in the list to open the Detail Panel on the right side of the screen. The detail panel shows:
  • Partition and offset — the Kafka coordinates of the message.
  • Headers — all key-value headers attached to the message envelope.
  • Payload — the message value rendered as formatted JSON, or as raw text if the content is not valid JSON.
To view the payload in more space, click the Fullscreen button in the detail panel. The fullscreen JSON modal renders the payload with syntax highlighting and lets you copy the full content to your clipboard.