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The Problem: When APIs Meet AI Assistants A few weeks ago, I was experimenting with Model Context Protocol (MCP) for a Kafka integration project. The experience was eye-opening - being able to interact with complex systems through natural language felt like a glimpse into the future of development workflows. After successfully getting MCP working with Kafka, I started thinking about other systems I could connect. That’s when I looked at one of my old Django projects. ...

What if I told you that you could build, host, and maintain data APIs completely free using just GitHub? Here’s how I built a production-ready data platform without spending a penny on hosting. The Problem: APIs Are Expensive (Or Are They?) Building data-driven applications usually means expensive cloud hosting, database costs, and server maintenance. Most developers assume they need AWS, Google Cloud, or Azure to run automated data collection and serve APIs. But what if there was a better way? ...

Ever wondered where those massive icebergs the size of cities are drifting? I built a system to track them in real-time using NASA satellite data. The Problem: Lost Giants in the Southern Ocean Antarctic icebergs are some of the most fascinating phenomena on Earth. These floating ice mountains—some larger than entire countries—break off from ice shelves and drift across the Southern Ocean for years. But tracking their movements has always been challenging. ...

Integration testing is crucial for Kafka Connectors to ensure they work correctly with external systems. This guide provides a comprehensive approach to setting up and executing integration tests for Kafka Connectors, covering everything from environment setup to best practices for testing source and sink connectors.

A step‑by‑step guide to using FastMCP and the MCP protocol to expose Kafka operations (topic management, produce/consume, troubleshooting) as LLM‑accessible tools.

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A practical guide to creating tombstone records for Kafka compacted topics using the kafka-console-producer.sh command-line tool with the null marker feature

Apache Kafka is a powerful distributed event streaming platform, and Kafka Connect makes it easy to integrate Kafka with external systems. While many pre-built connectors exist, real-world applications often need custom connectors tailored for proprietary systems, custom logic, or advanced error handling. That’s where this production-ready template comes in—it removes the boilerplate and gives you everything you need to build, test, and deploy connectors with ease.

Kafka Connect provides a flexible way to process streaming data using Single Message Transforms (SMTs). If you need to filter out tombstone records (records with null values), you should use the generic Filter transformation along with the RecordIsTombstone predicate. Here’s the correct configuration: # Define the predicate to detect tombstone records (i.e., records with null values) predicates=dropTombstone predicates.dropTombstone.type=org.apache.kafka.connect.transforms.predicates.RecordIsTombstone # Configure the Filter transformation to drop records that match the predicate transforms=dropTombstone transforms.dropTombstone.type=org.apache.kafka.connect.transforms.Filter transforms.dropTombstone.predicate=dropTombstone Explanation What is a Predicate? A predicate in Kafka Connect is a condition that evaluates whether a given record meets certain criteria. It returns either true or false. If true, the transformation (such as filtering) is applied. In this case, the predicate named dropTombstone uses the built-in class RecordIsTombstone, which evaluates to true when a record’s value is null. ...

In this technical deep-dive, we unravel the power of Server-Sent Events (SSE), a game-changing web technology that simplifies real-time communication. Developers often struggle with complex, resource-intensive methods for creating live updates, but SSE offers an elegant solution that’s both lightweight and powerful.