Docs Self-Managed Reference rpk Commands rpk topic rpk topic produce This is documentation for Self-Managed v23.2, which is no longer supported. To view the latest available version of the docs, see v24.2. rpk topic produce Produce records to a topic. Producing records reads from STDIN, parses input according to --format, and produce records to Redpanda. The input formatter understands a wide variety of formats. Parsing input operates on either sizes or on delimiters, both of which can be specified in the same formatting options. If using sizes to specify something, the size must come before what it is specifying. Delimiters match on an exact text basis. This command will quit with an error if any input fails to match your specified format. Format input Slashes can be used for common escapes: \t \n \r \\ \xNN matches tabs, newlines, carriage returns, slashes, and hex encoded characters. Percent encoding reads into specific values of a record: %t topic %T topic length %k key %K key length %v value %V value length %h begin the header specification %H number of headers %p partition (if using the --partition flag) Three escapes exist to parse characters that are used to modify the previous escapes: %% percent sign %{ left brace %} right brace Modifiers Text and numbers can be read in multiple formats, and the default format can be changed within brace modifiers. %v reads a value, while %v{hex} reads a value and then hex decodes it before producing. %T reads the length of a topic from the input, while %T{3} reads exactly three bytes for a topic from the input. All modifiers go within braces following a percent-escape. Numbers Reading number values can have the following modifiers: ascii parse numeric digits until a non-numeric (default) hex64 sixteen hex characters hex32 eight hex characters hex16 four hex characters hex8 two hex characters hex4 one hex character big64 eight byte big endian number big32 four byte big endian number big16 two byte big endian number big8 alias for byte little64 eight byte little endian number little32 four byte little endian number little16 two byte little endian number little8 alias for byte byte one byte number <digits> directly specify the length as this many digits bool read "true" as 1, "false" as 0 When reading number sizes, the size corresponds to the size of the encoded values, not the decoded values. "%T{6}%t{hex}" will read six hex bytes and decode into three. Text Reading text values can have the following modifiers: hex read text then hex decode it base64 read text then std-encoding base64 decode it re read text matching a regular expression Headers Headers are parsed with an internal key / value specifier format. For example, the following will read three headers that begin and end with a space and are separated by an equal: %H{3}%h{ %k=%v } Examples In the below examples, we can parse many records at once. The produce command reads input and tokenizes based on your specified format. Every time the format is completely matched, a record is produced and parsing begins anew. A key and value, separated by a space and ending in newline: -f '%k %v\n' A four byte topic, four byte key, and four byte value: -f '%T{4}%K{4}%V{4}%t%k%v' A value to a specific partition, if using a non-negative --partition flag: -f '%p %v\n' A big-endian uint16 key size, the text " foo ", and then that key: -f '%K{big16} foo %k' A value that can be two or three characters followed by a newline: -f '%v{re#...?#}\n' Miscellaneous Producing requires a topic to produce to. The topic can be specified either directly on as an argument, or in the input text through %t. A parsed topic takes precedence over the default passed in topic. If no topic is specified directly and no topic is parsed, this command will quit with an error. The input format can parse partitions to produce directly to with %p. Doing so requires specifying a non-negative --partition flag. Any parsed partition takes precedence over the --partition flag; specifying the flag is the main requirement for being able to directly control which partition to produce to. You can also specify an output format to write when a record is produced successfully. The output format follows the same formatting rules as the topic consume command. See that command’s help text for a detailed description. Usage rpk topic produce [TOPIC] [flags] Flags Value Type Description --acks int Number of acks required for producing (-1=all, 0=none, 1=leader) (default -1). --allow-auto-topic-creation - Auto-create non-existent topics; requires auto_create_topics_enabled on the broker. -z, --compression string Compression to use for producing batches (none, gzip, snappy, lz4, zstd) (default "snappy"). --delivery-timeout duration Per-record delivery timeout, if non-zero, min 1s. -f, --format string Input record format (default "%v\n"). -H, --header stringArray Headers in format key:value to add to each record (repeatable). -h, --help - Help for produce. -k, --key string A fixed key to use for each record (parsed input keys take precedence). --max-message-bytes int32 If non-negative, maximum size of a record batch before compression (default -1). -o, --output-format string what to write to stdout when a record is successfully produced (default "Produced to partition %p at offset %o with timestamp %d.\n"). -p, --partition int32 Partition to directly produce to, if non-negative (also allows %p parsing to set partitions) (default -1). -Z, --tombstone - Produce empty values as tombstones. --config string Redpanda or rpk config file; default search paths are ~/.config/rpk/rpk.yaml, $PWD, and /etc/redpanda/redpanda.yaml. -X, --config-opt stringArray Override rpk configuration settings; '-X help' for detail or '-X list' for terser detail. --profile string rpk profile to use. -v, --verbose - Enable verbose logging. 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