support of metadata

[untereiner]

Hi,

I have avro schemas where metadata have been introduced for records.
As written in the doc:

A JSON object, of the form:

{"type": "typeName" ...attributes...}

where typeName is either a primitive or derived type name, as defined below. Attributes not defined in this document are permitted as metadata, but must not affect the format of serialized data.

But has someone a idea how I could generate these metadata as part of an avro trait without serializing them ?
Maybe: #[serde(skip)] to skip both serialization and deserialization ?

Whould you accept a PR with such a feature ?

[lerouxrgd]

Could you provide a more specific example of such a feature ? With an example schema and the expected generated struct.

[untereiner]

Here is an example:

{
	"type": "record",
	"namespace": "Core",
	"name": "Ping",
	"protocol": "0",
	"messageType": "8",
	"senderRole": "client,server",
	"protocolRoles": "client, server",
	"multipartFlag": false,
  
	"fields":
	[
		{ "name": "currentDateTime", "type": "long" }
	]
}

{
	"type": "record",
	"namespace": "Core",
	"name": "Pong",
	"protocol": "0",
	"messageType": "9",
	"senderRole": "client,server",
	"protocolRoles": "client, server",
	"multipartFlag": false,
  
	"fields":
	[
		{ "name": "currentDateTime", "type": "long" }
	]
}

messagetType, senderRole, protocoleRoles, multipartFlag are metadata I think.
They are in the schema. But they are constants. There value cannot change unlike the fields.

I do not exactly know how to represent them in Rust. Maybe something like:

mod Core

struct Ping { 
   currentDateTime: i64
}

impl Ping {
   const messageType: &str = "8";
   const senderRole: &str = "client,server";
   const protocoleRoles: &str = "client,server";
   const multipartFlag: bool = false;
}

struct Pong { 
   currentDateTime: i64
}

impl Pong {
   const messageType: &str = "9";
   const senderRole: &str = "client,server";
   const protocoleRoles: &str = "client,server";
   const multipartFlag: bool = false;
}

And I think it could reopen #23 because I am not sure this case is handled by the schema generation.

[lerouxrgd]

Sadly those are non standard fields, there is no way to know their (potentially nested) type.
Moreover there is no "catch all" variant for such metadata in the underlying apache-avro Schema enum, therefore I don't think that there is a way to handle such a use-case.

[untereiner]

I understand your point. These attributes are not part of the avro spec. However their presence in the schema is allowed by the spec.
For their types I think it could be reasonable to limit the list to the same as those of the avro spec.

I have a data exchange protocol using avro schemas that uses this possibility to add constants (no need of fields) at the protocol level.

[martin-g]

As mentioned by @lerouxrgd custom attributes are not supported yet by apache-avro.

We've just had a big head ache due to the new impl for those in the C++ SDK:

• https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/AVRO-3547
• https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/AVRO-3601
  See also their PRs for more details.

At the end we agreed to make the custom attributes' values string-only. The user application could parse the value if needed.
Please create a new JIRA ticket at https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/AVRO for adding support for custom attributes in the Rust SDK.
A PR with the actual implementation would be awesome too! :-)

[untereiner]

@martin-g I looked very quickly at those issues. It is mentioned for « at field level ». Is this a still a general implementation for custom attributes at any level ?

I will open a ticket and try an implementation next week.

[martin-g]

According to the spec attributes/metadata could be next to "type", so I understand it both top-level and field-level.

But top-level looks very much like file metadata.
File metadata is supported in Rust SDK 0.14.0+!

[untereiner]

First a question: the spec calls these: "metadata", so why calling them "custom attributes" instead of metadata in the implementation ?

I do not know what "Object Container Files" are and used for.
They are things:

• The schema
• The actual data to be serde-d

For me the metadata are in the schema only because of this from spec:

but must not affect the format of serialized data

[martin-g]

Better ask these questions in the dev@ mailing list.

First a question: the spec calls these: "metadata", so why calling them "custom attributes" instead of metadata in the implementation ?

Not sure, but for me the answer is - consistency with the other SDKs.

I have started working on this and I will create a draft PR soon!