Using Apache Avro on .NET

The Apache Avro serialization format is quite useful (e.g. for Kafka Streams) or when you need to have a schema for your data exchange.

You will face three problems using it on .NET, however:

1. The .NET documentation is quite sparse.
2. There are multiple implementations, so you will need to pick the right one.
3. None of the .NET implementations are complete and support the full Avro spec (e.g. logical types)

This repository contains an example of how to work with Avro in C# and F#.

• The Avro schemas are defined in the src\idl folder.
• Classes for schema types are generated with avrogen, see the GeneratedSchemaTypes project.
• The F# tool to read and write records is in src\fsharp\AvroFSharp
• The C# tool is in src\csharp\AvroCSharp

Building the Code

The code uses the Fake command-line tool to build:

The tools are described in the .config\dotnet-tools.json manifest, so you only have to and issue the installation and build command:

dotnet tool restore
dotnet fake build

The build itself is described in the build.fsx file.

Running the Code

Get usage:

dotnet run --project src\csharp\AvroCSharp

Save a record to an Avro file container in the tmp directory:

dotnet run --project src\csharp\AvroCSharp save-file tmp\transfer.avro

or

dotnet run --project src\fsharp\AvroFSharp save-file tmp\transfer.avro

Load the record from the Avro file container:

dotnet run --project src\csharp\AvroCSharp load-file tmp\transfer.avro

or

 dotnet run --project src\fsharp\AvroFSharp load-file tmp\transfer.avro    

Avro Tools

The best Avro tools are only available Java tools jar. You can get them here:

    wget http://www.us.apache.org/dist/avro/avro-1.9.2/java/avro-tools-1.9.2.jar -OutFile avro-tools-1.9.2.jar

The command-line tool will list all its possibilities if you invoke it like this:

java -jar avro-tools-1.9.2.jar

It has useful tools for showing querying file schemas and metadata, converting between binary and human-readable text representations of you data (text and json), compiling schema IDL to the JSON schema format.

If you have saved an Avro file with the applications in tmp\transfer.avro you can use the tools like this:

Get the schema from the container using Avro Tools (see below):

java -jar avro-tools-1.9.2.jar getschema tmp\transfer.avro    

Read the Avro File as JSON:

java -jar .\avro-tools-1.9.2.jar tojson .\tmp\transfer.avro

Defining Schemas

Avro offers a succinct IDL format and a verbose JSON format to describe the schemas and protocols.

The definitions are in the src\idl folder.

Logical Types

Note that there is no support for converting .NET types to and from logicalTypes yet (e.g. to date or fixed decimal) in the Apache Avro library nor in the Confluent fork. It is supported in e.g. the Java library. It is underway in PR AVRO-2359: Support Logical Types in C#.

Code Generation

I tried different code generators.

At the time of writing (February 2020) the Confluent fork is the most mature, but it has been incorporated into the official Apache tooling and will be discontinued when it is released with the Avro 1.10 release (soon?).

My advice is to use Apache.Avro and the code-generator Apache.Avro.Tools unless there is something in the Confluent fork you absolutely need for the moment.

Chr.Avro Code Generator

The Chr.Avro code generator looked promising, but could not handle union types (e.g. the two types of bank accounts in the example IDL):

dotnet tool install Chr.Avro.Cli --global

Then,

Get-Content .\idl\transfers.avsc | dotnet avro generate | Out-File .\src\csharp\GeneratedSchemaTypes\generated\Transfers.cs

Conclusion: Not recommended.

Confluent Code Generator

The Confluent Code Generator does a better job. Unions are represented as the .NET type object but that will do.

You can install it as a global tool like this:

dotnet tool install -g Confluent.Apache.Avro.AvroGen

Then to generate the code:

avrogen -s .\idl\transfers.avsc  .\src\csharp\GeneratedSchemaTypes\generated\

Note that it is being deprecated since Apache has started updating their tool again.

Apache Avro Tools Code Generator

In the end this is what we are using. After some years of not being good enough, it has now caught up with the Confluent fork and once 1.10 is release (in 2020?) the Confluent fork will be discontinued.

To install into the dotnet-tools.json manifest (already done):

dotnet tool install Apache.Avro.Tools --version 1.9.1

Then to install the local tools:

dotnet tool restore

And to generate the code into the generated directory:

dotnet avrogen .\idl\transfers.avsc  .\src\csharp\GeneratedSchemaTypes\generated\

Developer Information

The C# project is a skeleton project file used to build the generated code when the Avro schemas have been compiled.

Visual Studio Code

Configure VS code to use dotnet fsi.