Kafka (kafkajs) → Go

gox does not ship a Kafka client — use a mature Go library. This guide maps kafkajs patterns.

Library choice

Node.js	Go	Notes
kafkajs	segmentio/kafka-go	Most popular, simple API
node-rdkafka	confluent-kafka-go	librdkafka bindings, production-grade

Recommendation: kafka-go for most migrations; Confluent client for advanced ops.

go get github.com/segmentio/kafka-go

Producer

kafkajs

const { Kafka } = require('kafkajs');
const kafka = new Kafka({ brokers: ['localhost:9092'] });
const producer = kafka.producer();
await producer.connect();
await producer.send({ topic: 'events', messages: [{ value: JSON.stringify({ id: 1 }) }] });

kafka-go

import "github.com/segmentio/kafka-go"

w := kafka.NewWriter(kafka.WriterConfig{
    Brokers: []string{"localhost:9092"},
    Topic:   "events",
})
defer w.Close()

err := w.WriteMessages(ctx, kafka.Message{
    Value: []byte(`{"id":1}`),
})

Consumer

kafkajs

const consumer = kafka.consumer({ groupId: 'my-group' });
await consumer.connect();
await consumer.subscribe({ topic: 'events' });
await consumer.run({
  eachMessage: async ({ message }) => {
    console.log(message.value.toString());
  },
});

kafka-go

r := kafka.NewReader(kafka.ReaderConfig{
    Brokers: []string{"localhost:9092"},
    Topic:   "events",
    GroupID: "my-group",
})
defer r.Close()

for {
    m, err := r.ReadMessage(ctx)
    if err != nil {
        break
    }
    fmt.Println(string(m.Value))
}

Pattern mapping

kafkajs	kafka-go
producer.send()	Writer.WriteMessages()
consumer.run({ eachMessage })	Reader.ReadMessage() loop
admin.createTopics()	kafka.Dial + CreateTopics
compression: CompressionTypes.GZIP	kafka.Gzip codec in WriterConfig
Idempotent producer	Writer.RequiredAcks, Writer.Async config

With gox/queue

For Redis-backed job queues (Bull/BullMQ style), use gox/queue instead of Kafka when:

• Lower throughput is acceptable
• You already run Redis
• Jobs need retries/DLQ with less ops overhead

Use Kafka when you need event streaming, replay, or multi-consumer fan-out at scale.

Further reading

• kafka-go README
• Confluent Go client docs