> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://ondrej-kvasnovsky-2.gitbook.io/kafka-handbook/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://ondrej-kvasnovsky-2.gitbook.io/kafka-handbook/console-client.md).

# Console Client

We are going to look how to use Kafka from command line.

## Create topic

The first thing we need to do is to create a topic.

```
➜ kafka-topics --create \
    --zookeeper localhost:2181 \
    --replication-factor 1 \
    --partitions 12 \
    --topic my-topic

Created topic "my-topic".
```

## List topics

When there are existing topics in Kafka, we can list them.

```
➜ kafka-topics --list \
  --zookeeper localhost:2181

__consumer_offsets
my-topic
```

## Produce messages

We are going to send couple of messages into Kafka.

```
➜ kafka-console-producer \
    --broker-list localhost:9092 \
    --topic my-topic
>my first message
>
```

## Consume messages

Now we need to start consumer that will read messages from the topic.

```
➜ kafka-console-consumer \
    --bootstrap-server localhost:9092 \
    --topic my-topic \
    --from-beginning
my first message
```