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

Installation

Install as a .NET tool:

dotnet tool install --global SJP.AvroTool

Usage

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

$ avrotool --help

USAGE:
    avrotool [OPTIONS] <COMMAND>

OPTIONS:
    -h, --help       Prints help information
    -v, --version    Prints version information

COMMANDS:
    idl <IDL_FILE>                      Generates a JSON protocol file from an Avro IDL file
    idl2schemata <IDL_FILE>             Extract JSON schemata of the types from an Avro IDL file
    codegen <INPUT_FILE> <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();
}
$ 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();
}
$ 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();
}

$ 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.