Kafka Streams Topology Visualization

Spring Boot Actuator can be used to conveniently expose an endpoint returning a text-based representation of our Kafka Streams topology. We can use this text-based representation, or topology description, for documentation and use third-party open-source tools to visualize the topology by converting the text-based representation to an image.

Generating a topology text-based representation is not a Spring Boot feature; we can do it in non-Spring Boot applications as well. However, Spring Boot makes our lives easier when it comes to accessing it.

Below is a fully functional Spring Boot Kafka Streams application with the actuator configured to expose the metrics endpoint: