How-to
View messages on a topic
Peek at the data flowing through a topic — read-only, nothing is disturbed
What you'll achieve
A look at the actual messages flowing through a topic — read-only, so you won't disturb the applications using it.
Before you start
- Any role can do this — viewing messages is read-only and works even in read-only environments.
Steps
- Click Topics in the sidebar (under Resources) and click the topic's name in the list.
- On the topic's page, open the Messages tab.
- Pick how to read: in the Consume dropdown choose Latest (the newest messages) or From beginning (the oldest). From offset and From timestamp let you start from an exact position or moment.
- Optionally narrow down: choose a single Partition instead of All, change the Limit (25 up to 1,000), or type in the Filter key/value... box to only show matching messages.
- Click Fetch.
What success looks like
A table of messages appears with a header like "25 messages fetched". You can save what you see with the CSV or JSON buttons.
Something went wrong?
- "No messages found" — the topic may simply be empty, or your filters are too narrow. Try Consume → From beginning and clear the filter box.
- Nothing loads at all — check your context is set (step 1 of Create a topic shows how).
- Need to filter, join, or reshape instead of just peeking? Use the Query with Flink SQL button next to Fetch — see the Flink guide.
Background on topics and what messages are? Read the Topics guide.