Welcome to our workshop!
Thank you so much for taking part in our very first hands-on workshop: Learn Apache Kafka with Python
We hope you will join us on Youtube LIVE on Tuesday, but what follows are written instructions for those keeners who would like to jump ahead, or for those newer folks who might hit bumps along the way during the workshop.
If you want to have a look beforehand, here is the GitHub repo.
A tutorial following similar steps is also available in Aiven’s DevCenter.
Pre-requisites
To get the most out of your workshop experience, we recommend doing the following ahead of time:
- Get signed in to Aiven Console
- Authenticate with Gitpod
- Set Gitpod’s Python client environment
We strongly suggest to use Google Chrome for the workshop
Get signed in to Aiven Console
In order to eliminate issues between individual machines, we’ll be using Apache Kafka and Apache Flink on the Aiven platform.
To get started, follow the instructions at Creating an Aiven account
Authenticate with Gitpod
Gitpod is an entire development environment running in the cloud, accessible from your browser, including an IDE and Jupyter notebooks. Once again, we’ll use this tool to eliminate issues with individual machines during the workshop.
This step will connect Gitpod to your GitHub account. The process, and related privileges is explained in the dedicated Gitpod documentation.
- Go to Dashboard and click Continue with GitHub.
- A new window will open, and you’ll be directed to enter your GitHub credentials. Fill out the form and click Sign in.
- You’ll be presented with a screen to authorize Gitpod to view your GitHub email address. Click Authorize gitpod-io. If you have 2FA (two factor authentication) set up, you will have to do that as well.
- Back at the previous screen from step 1, click Continue with GitHub.
- You should now see GitPod’s welcome screen. Click Continue with 10 hours per month.
- Either leave defaults, or make whatever customizations you’d like at the How are you going to use Gitpod? screen. Click Continue.
- Answer the demographic questions however you’d like and hit Continue.
- Click Continue from the welcome page, leaving the default settings.
- You will now have to enter a mobile number to verify your account. Once you receive the 6-digit code, enter it and click Validate account.
- Your account has now been successfully validated!
- Once you click Continue, you’ll be back at the New Workspace screen. Click Continue, leaving the default settings.
- Congratulations! You will now find yourself in the Gitpod editing environment:
Set Python client environment
The workshop’s materials are stored in Jupyter Notebooks to make it easy to follow the examples and always have all the code in front of you.
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From the Gitpod EXPLORER panel at the left, click on > notebooks which expands out to show the files inside that folder:
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Click the folder called 1-produce.ipynb to load the first notebook.
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In the upper right, press Select Kernel.
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Your first time, you’ll be directed to choose a kernel source. Select Install/Enable suggested extensions Python + Jupyter.
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You’ll then be prompted to install and synchronize the ‘Python’ extension. Choose Install. Answer the same for the ‘Jupyter’ extension.
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Press Select Kernel again, and choose Python Environments. The Recommended selection of Python 3.12.1 should be OK.
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Congratulations! You should now see Python 3.12.1 where the “Select Kernel” button used to be. You’re all set to start the workshop!
Troubleshooting / FAQs
I’ve already used Aiven before and used all of my trial credits. Can I still participate in the workshop?
You can create a new account with another email address, this will entitle you of a new trial with the 300$ of credits and a month to spend them.
When I opened Gitpod, I saw a bunch of little error boxes on my screen!
That’s ok. Just click on the x for each of them to make them go away. The errors listed are related to Jupyter notebooks and not relevant for the success of the workshop.
