Tracing Headers

Enables extra records headers

K2K can enrich each replicated record with metadata about its origin and the replication process. This information is added as standard Kafka record headers, making it available to downstream systems for data lineage tracking, debugging, or advanced observability.

The feature is controlled by two configuration blocks:

• features.tracingHeaders enables/disables specific headers
• tracing.headers customizes the header names.

Configuration Parameters

Tracing headers can be enabled/disabled all at once by providing specifying enabled or disabled as the value for tracingHeaders .

Alternatively, headers can be enabled/disabled individually by providing the one or more of the following properties as the value of features.tracingHeaders

Property	Description
partition	When set to enabled, adds a header containing the record's original partition number from the source topic.
offset	When set to enabled, adds a header containing the record's original offset from the source partition.
topic	When set to enabled, adds a header containing the record's original source topic name.
pipeline	When set to enabled, adds a header containing the K2K application name (pipeline).

The names of the headers used can be customized using tracing.headers :

Property	Description	Default Name
partition	Overrides the name for the source partition header.	k2k_partition
offset	Overrides the name for the source offset header.	k2k_offset
topic	Overrides the name for the source topic header.	k2k_topic
pipeline	Overrides the name for the pipeline header.	k2k_pipeline

Examples

The following example enables all tracing headers:

# ---------------------------------------------------
# K2K Configuration for Tracing Headers
# ---------------------------------------------------

# 1. Enable the desired headers under the 'features' block.
features:
  tracingHeaders: enabled
# 2. Optionally, customize the names of the enabled headers.
tracing:
  headers:
    # The partition header will use its default name ('k2k.source.partition').
    # The offset header name is overridden to 'replication_offset'.
    offset: "replication_offset"

---

The following example configures K2K to add headers for the source partition and offset, and it provides a custom name for the offset header.

# ---------------------------------------------------
# K2K Configuration for Tracing Headers
# ---------------------------------------------------

# 1. Enable the desired headers under the 'features' block.
features:
  tracingHeaders:
    # Enable the source partition and offset headers.
    partition: enabled
    offset: enabled
    # The 'topic' and 'pipeline' headers will remain disabled.
    # topic: disabled
    # pipeline: disabled

# 2. Optionally, customize the names of the enabled headers.
tracing:
  headers:
    # The partition header will use its default name ('k2k.source.partition').
    # The offset header name is overridden to 'replication_offset'.
    offset: "replication_offset"

Resulting Record Headers:

A record processed with the configuration above would contain the following headers (example values):

Header Name	Example Value
k2k_partition	5
replication_offset	123456