Kafka Error INVALID_TOPIC_EXCEPTION
Error code 17 · Non-retriable Admin
The request attempted to perform an operation on an invalid topic.
Common Causes
- Topic name contains invalid characters (spaces, special chars like '#', '\', '/' ) or exceeds the 249-character limit
- Topic name is '.' or '..' which are reserved and rejected by Kafka regardless of other settings
- Application dynamically constructing topic names from user input or config values that introduce illegal characters
Solutions
- Enforce topic naming conventions at the application layer: only allow [a-zA-Z0-9._-] characters, max 249 chars; add a validation function before any createTopic or produce call
- Use kafka-topics.sh --create with --if-not-exists and let the broker reject invalid names early in CI/CD pipelines rather than at runtime
- If topic names come from external systems, sanitize by replacing invalid chars with '-' or '_' and truncating to safe length before use
Diagnostic Commands
# Describe topic partitions, leaders, and ISR
kafka-topics.sh --describe --topic '<topic>' --bootstrap-server localhost:9092
# List topics and search for the target topic
kafka-topics.sh --list --bootstrap-server localhost:9092 | grep -P '[^a-zA-Z0-9._-]'Related APIs
This error can be returned by: ListOffsets
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