How can you design a Kafka consumer to retry processing failed messages up to 5 times before routing them to a Dead Letter Queue?

hard📝 Application Q9 of 15

Kafka - Event-Driven Architecture

AUse Kafka Streams API with built-in retry and DLQ support without custom logic

BConfigure Kafka consumer with max.poll.records=5 and rely on automatic retries

CImplement a retry counter in message headers and on failure increment it; send to DLQ if count exceeds 5

DSet consumer property retries=5 and enable DLQ in the broker configuration

Step-by-Step Solution

Solution:

Step 1: Understand retry logic
Kafka consumers do not have built-in retry counters; you must implement retry tracking manually.
Step 2: Use message headers
Adding a retry count header allows tracking how many times a message was retried.
Step 3: Route to DLQ after max retries
When retry count exceeds 5, send the message to the DLQ topic.
Final Answer:
Implement a retry counter in message headers and on failure increment it; send to DLQ if count exceeds 5 -> Option C
Quick Check:
Manual retry count in headers controls DLQ routing [OK]

Quick Trick: Use header retry count to limit retries before DLQ [OK]

Common Mistakes:

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