Kafka Connect: How to add a custom connector(SMT) to an existing Kafka Connect docker installation?

Question

I have a Kafka Connect Cluster which has JDBC Source Connector plugin. I also have my own custom SMT which is a jar file to handle my use case using JDBC Source Connector plugin, for e.g my-custom-1.0.0.jar. For e.g the below. transformer type is my own java class MySMT

"transforms": "mytransformer", 
"transforms.mytransformer.type": "com.my.MySMT"

I know that I can put the jar file in plugin.path. However is it possible to reload the connector plugins(JDBC Source Connector) to load my SMT jar, without restarting Kafka Connect cluster?

If not what could be the best practice to do so?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Plugins are not dynamically loaded, so you'll need to restart the worker(s)

The alternative is to leave the source connector data as raw as possible, then use a stream processor to manipulate into a format which consumers can use