How can I delete all the messages from a Kafka topic?

Question

I created a Kafka topic and pushed large messages to that Kafka topic. Now I am getting an error saying:

kafka.common.InvalidMessageSizeException: invalid message size

How do I want to purge the topic so, that I can set the fetch.size for the topic?

Answer 1

To delete all the messages from a Kafka topic, you need to change the retention time of that topic the default retention time of Kafka topic is 168 hours, i.e. 7 days. In this case, you have to change the retention time to 1 second, after which the messages from the topic will be deleted. After changing the retention time, you can go ahead and change the retention time of the topic back to 168 hours.

You can change the retention of the topic by using the following command:

kafka-topics.sh --zookeeper localhost:2181 --alter --topic topic1 --config retention.ms=1000

If you wish to know about Kafka visit this Kafka Tutorial and Kafka Interview Questions.