Kafka: 4. GitHub Actions
This documentation is part of the GitHub Actions & GitLab CI guide. View the full guide here: Spin up a real Kafka service from your GitHub Actions or GitLab CI pipeline, run your tests against it, and tear it down automatically.
👋 Welcome to the Stackhero documentation!
Stackhero gives you a fully managed Kafka cloud environment, ready in minutes. Here is what you can expect:
- No limits on message size or transfer: scale your data without worrying about caps.
- Simple, one-click updates keep your platform current without downtime or manual work.
- Consistent high performance and robust security on your own private, dedicated infrastructure.
If you want to move faster and reduce operational overhead, Stackhero provides Kafka cloud hosting to help you. You can have a production-ready cluster in about 5 minutes.
To get started, you can save the following as .github/workflows/ci.yml. From now on, every push and pull request will run tests against a real Kafka instance.
name: CI with Kafka
on: [push, pull_request]
jobs:
test:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
env:
STACKHERO_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.STACKHERO_TOKEN }}
STACK_NAME: ci-kafka-${{ github.run_id }}-${{ github.run_attempt }}
INSTANCE: "10G" # Change this as needed (see step 3)
REGION: europe
steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@v4
- name: Install the Stackhero CLI and the client
run: |
curl -fsSL https://www.stackhero.io/install.sh | sh
apt-get update && apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends jq curl netcat-openbsd
- name: Create the Kafka service
run: |
set -euo pipefail
STACK_ID=$(stackhero --format=script stack-create --name="$STACK_NAME")
echo "STACK_ID=$STACK_ID" >> "$GITHUB_ENV"
SERVICE_ID=$(stackhero --format=script service-add \
--stack="$STACK_ID" \
--service-store="kafka" \
--instance="$INSTANCE" \
--region="$REGION")
echo "SERVICE_ID=$SERVICE_ID" >> "$GITHUB_ENV"
stackhero service-wait-for --service="$SERVICE_ID"
- name: Run tests against Kafka
run: |
set -euo pipefail
config=$(stackhero service-configuration-get --service="$SERVICE_ID" --format=json)
host=$(echo "$config" | jq -r '.configuration.domain')
# Open a TCP connection to the broker port.
nc -z -w 5 "$host" 9092
echo "✅ Kafka is reachable from CI."
# You can run your own test suite here using the credentials above ...
- name: Tear down (always, even on failure)
if: always()
run: |
if [ -n "${SERVICE_ID:-}" ]; then
stackhero service-delete --service="$SERVICE_ID" --confirm
stackhero service-wait-for --service="$SERVICE_ID"
fi
if [ -n "${STACK_ID:-}" ]; then
stackhero stack-delete --stack="$STACK_ID" --confirm
fi
The teardown step is configured with if: always() so it runs no matter what, making sure your Kafka instance is deleted and you are not billed for unused resources.