Avro java serialization as json not working correctly - avro

Question

I have a simple avro schema, from which I generated a java class using the avro-maven-plugin.
The avro schema is as follows:
{
"type": "record",
"name": "addressGeo",
"namespace": "com.mycompany",
"doc": "Best record address and list of geos",
"fields": [
{
"name": "version",
"type": "int",
"default": 1,
"doc": "version the class"
},
{
"name": "eventType",
"type": "string",
"default": "addressGeo",
"doc": "event type"
},
{
"name": "parcelId",
"type": "long",
"doc": "ParcelID of the parcel. Join parcelid and sequence with ParcelInfo"
},
{
"name": "geoCodes",
"type": {"type": "array", "items": "com.mycompany.geoCode"},
"doc": "Multiple Geocodes, with restrictions information"
},
{
"name": "brfAddress",
"type": ["null", "com.mycompany.address"],
"doc": "Address cleansed version of BRF"
}
]
}
If I construct a simple object using the builder, and serialize it using json, I get the following output:
{
"version": 1,
"eventType": {
"bytes": [
97,
100,
100,
114,
101,
115,
115,
71,
101,
111
],
"length": 10,
"string": null
},
"parcelId": 1,
"geoCodes": [
{
"version": 1,
"latitude": 1,
"longitude": 1,
"geoQualityCode": "g",
"geoSourceTypeID": 1,
"restrictions": "NONE"
}
],
"brfAddress": {
"version": 1,
"houseNumber": "1",
"houseNumberFraction": null,
"streetDirectionPrefix": null,
"streetName": "main",
"streetSuffix": "street",
"streetDirectionSuffix": null,
"fullStreetAddress": "1 main street, seattle, wa, 98101",
"unitPrefix": null,
"unitNumber": null,
"city": "seattle",
"state": "wa",
"zipCode": "98101",
"zipPlusFour": null,
"addressDPV": "Y",
"addressQualityCode": "good",
"buildingNumber": "1",
"carrierRoute": "t",
"censusTract": "c",
"censusTractAndBlock": "b",
"dataCleanerTypeID": 1,
"restrictions": "NONE"
}
}
Note the output of the eventType field. It is coming through as an array of bytes whereas the type of the field is a CharSequence.
Any idea why serialization is doing this? It works fine for other types that are strings.
I am using google-gson to serialize the object to json.

Answer 1

You might be working with a older version of avro, that uses CharSequence. Ideally string type should be java String type. I would suggest to update the avro version or have a look at this one - Apache Avro: map uses CharSequence as key