Hi Lewis,
In Avro, types are not nullable by default (unlike most programming
languages). So a type of {"type":"map", "values":"string"} with a default
of null does not make sense, because the type can never be null. If you
wanted the type to be nullable, your type would have to be ["null",
{"type":"map", "values":"string"}].
But a better solution may be to set your default to {}, like this:
{"name": "outlinks", "type": {"type":"map", "values":"string"},
"default":{}}
Does that help?
Martin
On 7 January 2014 10:50, Lewis John Mcgibbney <[email protected]>wrote:
> Hi Folks,
> We have the following avsc (below). The problem we are having though is
> that when we want to reach a 'map' type field e.g. outlinks, field value
> comes null (not with an empty map object). To prevent this, we have to set
> an empty map object before we do any operation in order not to get any NPE.
> We therefore have to set empty map objects before any serialization...
> Is there a better default value for this field (and other similar
> scenarios)?
> Thanks in advance, any guidance is greatly appreciated.
> Lewis
>
> {
> "type": "record",
> "name": "WebPage","default":null,
> "namespace": "org.apache.gora.examples.generated",
> "fields" : [
> {"name": "url", "type": ["null","string"], "default":null},
> {"name": "content", "type": ["null","bytes"],"default":null},
> {"name": "parsedContent", "type": {"type":"array", "items": "string"},
> "default":null},
> {"name": "outlinks", "type": {"type":"map", "values":"string"},
> "default":null},
> {"name": "metadata", "default":null, "type": {
> "name": "Metadata",
> "type": "record",
> "namespace": "org.apache.gora.examples.generated",
> "fields" : [
> {"name":"version","type":"int","default":0},
> {"name":"data","type":{"type":"map","values":"string"},
> "default":null}
> ]
> }}
> ]
> }
>
>
>
> --
> *Lewis*
>
