strimzi/strimzi-kafka-bridge

Strimzi Kafka Bridge is an HTTP bridge that enables communication between HTTP 1.1 clients and Apache Kafka clusters.

The bridge solves the problem that Apache Kafka natively uses only a proprietary protocol, making it inaccessible to clients that speak only HTTP. By acting as an intermediary, the bridge translates HTTP requests into Kafka's native protocol, allowing any HTTP-capable client to produce and consume messages from Kafka topics without needing to implement Kafka's custom protocol.

The tool suits projects where HTTP is the natural or required communication layer—web applications, microservices built around REST APIs, or environments where HTTP is the only available protocol. It can be deployed on Kubernetes and OpenShift using the Strimzi Kafka operator, or on bare-metal and VM environments by downloading and configuring the release artifacts. The bridge supports multiple processor architectures including amd64, arm64, ppc64le, and s390x, with testing confirmed on amd64 and s390x.

Development activity shows consistent engagement with community contributions. The project maintains documentation in AsciiDoc format alongside the codebase, with API reference documentation generated from an OpenAPI specification file to keep descriptions synchronized with implementation. Issues are tracked on GitHub and labeled to guide new contributors toward suitable starting points. The maintainers actively solicit community involvement through multiple channels including a dedicated mailing list and Slack workspace, and they provide a building guide to help contributors test changes before submission.