Building a Microservice Architecture with Kafka: An E-commerce Example

Hello everyone! In this post, I'm going to walk you through implementing a microservice architecture using .NET 8 and Kafka, a powerful message broker. We'll be using an e-commerce app as our example to demonstrate how this architecture can be applied in a real-world scenario.

What You'll Learn

If you're new to microservice architecture, don't worry—I've got you covered! Just leave a comment below, and I'll make a dedicated video to explain the basics. In this video, we’re diving straight into the implementation. Our solution consists of two main services: Product Service and Order Service. Each service has its own database and can communicate with the other through API calls. We'll be using Entity Framework Code First and SQL Server to handle our database needs.

Key Components

Product Service: Manages the products available in our e-commerce store.
Order Service: Handles the creation and management of orders.
Web App Interface: A Blazor Web App to display the products and handle user interactions.

These services will interact using Kafka, where they can produce and consume messages. This setup ensures our services are decoupled and can scale independently.

Step-by-Step Guide

Here's a quick overview of the steps we’ll cover in the video:

Project Setup: We'll start by creating the base structure for our microservice solution. This includes the web frontend project, product service, order service, and a shared library for models.
Service Configuration: Next, we'll configure each service to use SQL Server with Entity Framework, set up their respective databases, and create API controllers to handle requests.
Building the UI: We'll then build a simple UI using Blazor to display the list of products and allow users to place orders.
Integrating Kafka: Finally, we’ll set up Kafka using Docker and create producers and consumers in our services to handle messages between the product and order services. This integration will allow us to update product quantities in real-time as orders are placed.

Why Kafka?

Kafka is a great choice for microservices because it allows different parts of your system to communicate asynchronously and in a scalable way. In our example, every time an order is placed, a message is sent to the product service to update the product quantity—keeping everything in sync without tightly coupling the services.

Watch the Full Tutorial

Ready to see it in action? Check out the full video where I guide you step by step through this process. By the end, you'll have a working e-commerce app built on a robust microservice architecture using Kafka.

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Watch the Video on YouTube : Microservices with Kafka: ECommerce Example