Quick Start for Schema Management on Confluent Cloud
You can use Confluent Cloud Schema Registry to manage schemas in Confluent Cloud. You enable a single Schema Registry per Confluent Cloud environment. Schema Registry is accessed over port 443.
You can create and edit schemas in a schema editor and associate them with Kafka topics.
Log in to the Confluent Cloud UI
- Log in to Confluent Cloud at https://confluent.cloud.
- Select an environment or create a new one.
Enable Schema Registry for Confluent Cloud
Select a cluster.
Click the Schemas tab.
Choose a cloud provider and geography (which will map to a region under the hood).
- Select Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), or Azure
- Choose a Region. US, Europe, and APAC are the available choices.
- Click Enable Schema Registry.
Tip
For each cloud provider, geographies are mapped under the hood to the following regions:
- GCP US: us-central1
- GCP EU: europe-west3
- GCP APAC: australia-southeast1
- AWS US: us-east-2
- AWS EU: eu-central-1
- AWS APAC: ap-southeast-2
- Azure US: westus2
- Azure EU: westeurope
- Azure APAC: southeastasia
Review your settings, and click Continue to create the Schema Registry with these cloud provider and region settings.
This creates a Schema Registry to serve all clusters in the current environment. The environment level Schema Registry settings page is displayed.
An empty schemas list is shown, indicating no schemas have yet been created.
Create an API Key for Confluent Cloud Schema Registry
To use Confluent Cloud Schema Registry for managing Kafka clusters, you need an API key specific to
Schema Registry.
Note
- The API key for Confluent Cloud Schema Registry is distinct from the API key you created for Kafka
clusters in the same environment, per the Quick Start for Apache Kafka using Confluent Cloud.
- Confluent Cloud provides one Schema Registry per environment, and each environment can
contain multiple Kafka clusters. You need an API key/secret pair for each Kafka
cluster and another for the Schema Registry cluster.
In the environment for which you want to set up Schema Registry, click the Schema Registry tab,
then click Edit on the API credentials card.
Click Create key to create a new Schema Registry API key.
When the API Key and API Secret are saved, click the checkbox next to I have saved my API key and secret and am ready to continue, and click
Continue.
Your new Schema Registry key is shown on the Schema Registry API access key list.
Schema Registry API Keys for Multi-Tenant Clusters
Confluent Cloud supports one Schema Registry per environment. In multi-tenant deployments, the
registries for different Kafka clusters in different environments will have the
same URL as the Confluent Cloud Schema Registry. However, Confluent Cloud uses the Schema Registry API keys to store
schemas in different logical clusters.
Therefore, if you have a Schema Registry API key (prod-sr-api-1) for Schema Registry in production
1 cluster in environment A and a Schema Registry API key (for example, prod-sr-api-2)
for a Schema Registry in production 2 cluster in Environment B, when a Kafka producer sends
messages with prod-sr-api-1, Confluent Cloud appropriately registers a schema in
Schema Registry in prod-1 .
Create a Topic in Confluent Cloud
You may already have topics available on this cluster, having worked through the prerequisite Quick Start for Apache Kafka using Confluent Cloud, but create a new topic designed to test out Schema Registry.
Select the environment.
Tip
If you have only one environment, default, it will be selected already.
Select the cluster.
Click Topics on the left menu, then click Create topic.
Name the new topic employees, and click Create with defaults to add it.
Create a Schema
You can create schemas for topics from the web UI, or from the Confluent Cloud CLI.
This section shows you how to create a schema from the Confluent Cloud CLI, just to provide a 360 view of cloud
tools and demonstrate how you can use the web UI and the CLI to interact with the same entities, such as
environments, clusters, topics, and schemas.
If you need more help with the basic CLI commands, type ccloud --help, ccloud schema-registry --help
to drill down, or see Quick Start for Apache Kafka using Confluent Cloud and the Confluent Cloud command reference.
Log in to the Confluent Cloud CLI.
Follow the prompts to enter your credentials (email and password).
Upon login, Confluent Cloud indicates your current environment.
Enter your Confluent credentials:
Email:
Password:
Using environment t2814 ("my-cloud-demos")
Select the environment where you created the employees topic. (It may already be selected upon login.)
In order to verify this, use ccloud environment list to get the environment IDs, followed by ccloud environment use <ID> to select the environment you want (if it is not already the current environment).
For example:
Your output should resemble:
Id | Name
+-------------+--------------------+
* t2703 | default
env-vnywz | ccloud-demo
env-qzrg2 | data-lineage-demo
env-250o2 | my-new-environment
To use “ccloud-demo”:
ccloud environment use env-vnywz
Tip
- To list environments:
ccloud environment list
- To select an environment:
ccloud environment use <environment ID>
- To list clusters:
ccloud kafka cluster list
- To select a cluster:
ccloud kafka cluster use <cluster ID>
- For the full list of
ccloud commands see Confluent Cloud command reference.
Create a file containing the following JSON and name it employees.json.
{
"type" : "record",
"namespace" : "Example",
"name" : "Employee",
"fields" : [
{ "name" : "Name" , "type" : "string" },
{ "name" : "Age" , "type" : "int" }
]
}
Create a schema that uses employees.json.
ccloud schema-registry schema create --subject employees-value --schema employees.json --type AVRO
For example:
ccloud schema-registry schema create --subject employees-value --schema employees.json --type AVRO
Enter your Schema Registry API Key:
xxxx
Enter your Schema Registry API Secret:
xxxxyyyyzzzz
Successfully registered schema with ID: 100001
Tip
You have the option to create schemas that reference other schemas by using the --refs <ref-file>
flag with ccloud schema-registry schema create. To learn more about schema references,
see Schema References in the Confluent Platform documentation.
You can also create schema references from the web UI.
You must specify a schema format type as one of AVRO, JSON, or PROTOBUF,
and then supply a schema that conforms to the syntax for that type. To learn more about development
using these schema formats, see Schema Formats, Serializers, and Deserializers in the Confluent Platform documentation, the
JSON Schema project documentation,
the Apache Avro® specification,
and the Google Developer documentation on Protocol Buffers.
You can also create a schema from the web UI. To do so, select an environment and cluster,
select a topic, then click the Schema tab for that topic. Select a schema format type (for this example, Avro),
paste the schema (such as the employees.json content), and click Save.
View the Topic and Associated Schema
Return to the Confluent Cloud UI to view the new schema for the employees topic.
Navigate to the topics list for your cluster.
Click the employees topic you created in a previous step.
Click Schema.
And there you have it! You have a new schema (employees-value) for the employees topic in Confluent Cloud Schema Registry.
Use curl to View and Manage Schemas
You can also use curl commands to view and manage schemas on Confluent Cloud.
Schema Registry on Confluent Cloud requires that you pass the API Key and Secret with the --user (or -u) flag.
For example, to view all subjects in the registry:
curl --user <schema-registry-api-key>:<schema-registry-api-secret> \
<schema-registry-url>/subjects
For more information about using curl commands with Schema Registry, see Schema Registry API Usage Examples. With the exception of
this one same example, the examples are for on-premises Schema Registry but many of the commands are
relevant to Confluent Cloud, once you know how to pass your API Key and Secret as shown here.
Suggested Reading
Schemas Product Documentation