The Javadoc of TextIO states: * <p>By default, {@link TextIO.Read} returns a {@link PCollection} of {@link String Strings}, * each corresponding to one line of an input UTF-8 text file. To convert directly from the raw * bytes (split into lines delimited by '\n', '\r', or '\r\n') to another object of type {@code T}, * supply a {@code Coder<T>} using {@link TextIO.Read#withCoder(Coder)}.
However, as I stated, `withCoder` doesn't seem to have tests, and probably won't work given the hard-coded '\n' delimiter. On Mon, Jan 30, 2017 at 12:18 PM Jean-Baptiste Onofré <j...@nanthrax.net> wrote: > Hi Aviem, > > TextIO is not designed to write/read binary file: it's pure Text, so > String. > > Regards > JB > > On 01/30/2017 09:24 AM, Aviem Zur wrote: > > Hi, > > > > While trying to use TextIO to write/read a binary file rather than String > > lines from a textual file I ran into an issue - the delimiter TextIO uses > > seems to be hardcoded '\n'. > > See `findSeparatorBounds` - > > > https://github.com/apache/beam/blob/master/sdks/java/core/src/main/java/org/apache/beam/sdk/io/TextIO.java#L1024 > > > > The use case is to have a file of objects, encoded into bytes using a > > coder. However, '\n' is not a good delimiter here, as you can imagine. > > A similar pattern is found in Spark's `saveAsObjectFile` > > > https://github.com/apache/spark/blob/master/core/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/rdd/RDD.scala#L1512 > > where > > they use a more appropriate delimiter, to avoid such issues. > > > > I did not find any unit tests which use TextIO to read anything other > than > > Strings. > > > > -- > Jean-Baptiste Onofré > jbono...@apache.org > http://blog.nanthrax.net > Talend - http://www.talend.com >