Hi,
I'm trying to create a schema that references a type defined in another
schema and I'm having some troubles. Is there an easy way to do this?
My test schemas look like this:
$ cat position.avsc
{"type":"enum", "name": "Position", "namespace": "avro.examples.baseball",
"symbols": ["P", "C", "B1", "B2", "B3", "SS", "LF", "CF", "RF", "DH"]
}
$ cat player.avsc
{"type":"record", "name":"Player", "namespace": "avro.examples.baseball",
"fields": [
{"name": "number", "type": "int"},
{"name": "first_name", "type": "string"},
{"name": "last_name", "type": "string"},
{"name": "position", "type": {"type": "array", "items":
"avro.examples.baseball.Position"} }
]
}
I've read this thread (
http://apache-avro.679487.n3.nabble.com/How-to-reference-previously-defined-enum-in-avsc-file-td2663512.html)
and tried using IDL like so with no luck:
$ cat baseball.avdl
@namespace("avro.examples.baseball")
protocol Baseball {
import schema "position.avsc";
import schema "player.avsc";
}
$ java -jar avro-tools-1.5.1.jar idl baseball.avdl baseball.avpr
Exception in thread "main" org.apache.avro.SchemaParseException: Undefined
name: "avro.examples.baseball.Position"
at org.apache.avro.Schema.parse(Schema.java:979)
at org.apache.avro.Schema.parse(Schema.java:1052)
at org.apache.avro.Schema.parse(Schema.java:1021)
at org.apache.avro.Schema.parse(Schema.java:884)
at org.apache.avro.compiler.idl.Idl.ImportSchema(Idl.java:388)
at org.apache.avro.compiler.idl.Idl.ProtocolBody(Idl.java:320)
at
org.apache.avro.compiler.idl.Idl.ProtocolDeclaration(Idl.java:206)
at org.apache.avro.compiler.idl.Idl.CompilationUnit(Idl.java:84)
...
I also saw this blog post (
http://www.infoq.com/articles/ApacheAvro#_ftnref6_7758) where the author had
to write some nasty String.replace(..) code to combine schemas, but there's
got to be a better way that this.
Also FYI, it seems enum values can't start with numbers (i.e. '1B'). Is this
a know issue or a feature? I haven't seen it documented anywhere. You get an
error like this if the value starts with a number:
org.apache.avro.SchemaParseException: Illegal initial character
thanks,
Bill
