When consumer subscribes to a non-existent topic, it does not have control over whether the topic is automatically created or not. We have the broker configuration allow.auto.create.topics that controls topic auto-creation globally. If there is a lag between the consumers and producers starting up, we usually do not want the consumer to be able to automatically create the topic as this will use the default number of partitions and replication factor. Consumers should thus have the ability to be able to disable auto topic creation, if needed.
Configuration Name: allow.auto.create.topics
Type: BOOLEAN
Explanation: This configuration controls whether the topic is automatically created when subscribing to a non-existent topic. A topic will be auto-created only if this configuration is set to true and auto-topic creation is enabled on the broker using auto.create.topics.enable; otherwise auto-topic creation is not permitted. This configuration must be set to true when using brokers older than 0.11.
jsvd
commented
4 months ago
From https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/KAFKA/KIP-361%3A+Add+Consumer+Configuration+to+Disable+Auto+Topic+Creation: