In Spring Kafka, do I need to add the @EnableKafka annotation to my application?

Question

I see some people adding @EnableKafka to their spring boot application and I was wondering why. I have a working spring boot kafka producer and consumer and I didn't use @EnableKafka. So, why do people need to add it explicitly?

Thank you.

Answer 1

That is because Spring boot provides an auto configuration for Kafka via KafkaAutoConfiguration class (javadoc). When you use @EnableAutoConfiguration or @SpringBootApplication, Spring boot automatically configures Kafka for you.

You can test that by excluding the auto configuration by providing @SpringBootApplication(exclude={KafkaAutoConfiguration.class}), and Spring boot would not automatically configure Kafka for you.

If you don't use Spring boot, then you would have to use @EnableKafka to configure Kafka for your Spring app.

Answer 2

Spring Boot auto-configures @EnableKafka if it detects spring-kafka on the class path.

It is therefore not needed again on a boot app; it is only needed if your Spring app is not a Boot app.