AvroTools

AvroTools is a collection of tools, written in C# to work effectively with the Avro schema and serialization file formats.

Features

AvroTools supports the following features that are improvements upon the largely Java-based implementation provided by Apache.

Compile Avro IDL to an Avro Protocol.
Compile Avro IDL to Avro Schema.
Generate C# classes for protocols and schemas. The generated code is an improvement upon the canonical implementation.
Supports additional logical types compared to reference compiler. Note that these may not be usable in practice but can be compiled to compatible Avro Protocol/Schema. The following additional logical types are supported in IDL:
- uuid
- time-micros
- timestamp-micros
- local-timestamp-ms
- local-timestamp-micros
- duration

Install

This is not yet available on nuget, so the code is only available on GitHub.

Usage

The intention is for this to be installable as a dotnet tool, but for the moment usage is possible via dotnet run.

Most of the documentation is provided by the tool itself (outside of the language specifications).

$ dotnet run --project src/AvroTool
    ___                 ______            __
   /   |_   ___________/_  __/___  ____  / /
  / /| | | / / ___/ __ \/ / / __ \/ __ \/ /
 / ___ | |/ / /  / /_/ / / / /_/ / /_/ / /
/_/  |_|___/_/   \____/_/  \____/\____/_/

The helpful Avro compiler tool.

avrotool

Usage:
  avrotool [options] [command]

Options:
  -?, -h, --help  Show help and usage information
  --version       Show version information

Commands:
  idl <idlfile>                Generates a JSON protocol file from an Avro IDL file.
  idl2schemata <idlfile>       Extract JSON schemata of the types from an Avro IDL file.
  codegen <input> <namespace>  Generates C# code for a given Avro IDL, protocol or schema.

Examples

Compile IDL to an Avro Protocol

$ cat sample.avdl
protocol TestProtocol {
  record TestRecord {
    string FirstName;
    string LastName;
  }

  void Ping();
}
$ dotnet run --project src/AvroTool idl sample.avdl
Generated /home/sjp/repos/AvroTools/TestProtocol.avpr
$ cat TestProtocol.avpr
{
  "protocol": "TestProtocol",
  "types": [
    {
      "type": "record",
      "fields": [
        {
          "name": "FirstName",
          "type": "string"
        },
        {
          "name": "LastName",
          "type": "string"
        }
      ],
      "name": "TestRecord"
    }
  ],
  "messages": {
    "Ping": {
      "request": [],
      "response": "null"
    }
  }
}

Compile IDL to Avro Schema

$ cat sample.avdl
protocol TestProtocol {
  record TestRecord {
    string FirstName;
    string LastName;
  }

  enum TestEnum {
    A,
    B,
    C
  }

  void Ping();
}
$ dotnet run --project src/AvroTool idl2schemata sample.avdl
Generated /home/sjp/repos/AvroTools/TestRecord.avsc
Generated /home/sjp/repos/AvroTools/TestEnum.avsc

$ cat TestRecord.avsc
{
    "type": "record",
    "name": "TestRecord",
    "fields": [
        {
            "name": "FirstName",
            "type": "string"
        },
        {
            "name": "LastName",
            "type": "string"
        }
    ]
}

$ cat TestEnum.avsc
{
    "type": "enum",
    "name": "TestEnum",
    "symbols": [
        "A",
        "B",
        "C"
    ]
}

Generate C# code for Avro Protocol and Schema

$ cat sample.avdl
protocol TestProtocol {
  record TestRecord {
    string FirstName;
    string LastName;
  }

  void Ping();
}

$ dotnet run --project src/AvroTool codegen sample.avdl Test.Code.Namespace
Generated /home/sjp/repos/AvroTools/TestProtocol.cs
Generated /home/sjp/repos/AvroTools/TestRecord.cs

// Contents of files omitted for brevity

Further Information

For more information visit the repository on GitHub.