---
layout: doc_page
title: "Apache Kafka Lookups"
---
# Kafka Lookups
To use this Apache Druid (incubating) extension, make sure to [include](../../operations/including-extensions.html) `druid-lookups-cached-global` and `druid-kafka-extraction-namespace` as an extension.
If you need updates to populate as promptly as possible, it is possible to plug into a kafka topic whose key is the old value and message is the desired new value (both in UTF-8) as a LookupExtractorFactory.
```json
{
"type":"kafka",
"kafkaTopic":"testTopic",
"kafkaProperties":{"zookeeper.connect":"somehost:2181/kafka"}
}
```
|Parameter|Description|Required|Default|
|---------|-----------|--------|-------|
|`kafkaTopic`|The kafka topic to read the data from|Yes||
|`kafkaProperties`|Kafka consumer properties. At least"zookeeper.connect" must be specified. Only the zookeeper connector is supported|Yes||
|`connectTimeout`|How long to wait for an initial connection|No|`0` (do not wait)|
|`isOneToOne`|The map is a one-to-one (see [Lookup DimensionSpecs](../../querying/dimensionspecs.html))|No|`false`|
The extension `kafka-extraction-namespace` enables reading from a kafka feed which has name/key pairs to allow renaming of dimension values. An example use case would be to rename an ID to a human readable format.
The consumer properties `group.id` and `auto.offset.reset` CANNOT be set in `kafkaProperties` as they are set by the extension as `UUID.randomUUID().toString()` and `smallest` respectively.
See [lookups](../../querying/lookups.html) for how to configure and use lookups.
# Limitations
Currently the Kafka lookup extractor feeds the entire kafka stream into a local cache. If you are using OnHeap caching, this can easily clobber your java heap if the kafka stream spews a lot of unique keys.
OffHeap caching should alleviate these concerns, but there is still a limit to the quantity of data that can be stored.
There is currently no eviction policy.
## Testing the Kafka rename functionality
To test this setup, you can send key/value pairs to a kafka stream via the following producer console:
```
./bin/kafka-console-producer.sh --property parse.key=true --property key.separator="->" --broker-list localhost:9092 --topic testTopic
```
Renames can then be published as `OLD_VAL->NEW_VAL` followed by newline (enter or return)