[java] How to Delete a topic in apache kafka

Deletion of a topic has been supported since 0.8.2.x version. You have to enable topic deletion (setting delete.topic.enable to true) on all brokers first.

Note: Ever since 1.0.x, the functionality being stable, delete.topic.enable is by default true.

Follow this step by step process for manual deletion of topics

  1. Stop Kafka server
  2. Delete the topic directory, on each broker (as defined in the logs.dirs and log.dir properties) with rm -rf command
  3. Connect to Zookeeper instance: zookeeper-shell.sh host:port
  4. From within the Zookeeper instance:
    1. List the topics using: ls /brokers/topics
    2. Remove the topic folder from ZooKeeper using: rmr /brokers/topics/yourtopic
    3. Exit the Zookeeper instance (Ctrl+C)
  5. Restart Kafka server
  6. Confirm if it was deleted or not by using this command kafka-topics.sh --list --zookeeper host:port