Controlling AVRO record names and namespaces

When writing output as AVRO, Lenses creates schemas for you, automatically generating AVRO record names.

In this tutorial we will learn how to override the default record naming strategy.

Setting up our input topic

We are going to create and populate a topic that we will later use in a couple of SQL Processors.

In SQL Studio, create the topic running the following query:

CREATE TABLE mytopic(a string, b string, c string) FORMAT (STRING, AVRO);

For the purposes of our tutorial, it is enough to insert a single topic:

INSERT INTO mytopic(a, b, c) VALUES ("a", "b", "c");

Create a simple SQL Processor

We are now going to create a processor that will show the default behavior of AVRO record naming in Lenses.

The processor does not do much, it just reshapes the fields of the original topic, putting some of them in a nested field:

SET defaults.topic.autocreate=true;

INSERT INTO mytopic_2
SELECT STREAM a as x.a, b as x.y.b, c as x.y.c
FROM mytopic

We then start the processor. Lenses will create the new topic mytopic_2, and new schema will be created in the Schema Registry, as soon as the first (and only) record is processed.

If we inspect the value schema of mytopic_2, we see that this is the one generated:

{
  "type": "record",
  "name": "record1",
  "fields": [
    {
      "name": "x",
      "type": {
        "type": "record",
        "name": "record0",
        "fields": [
          {
            "name": "a",
            "type": "string"
          },
          {
            "name": "y",
            "type": {
              "type": "record",
              "name": "record",
              "fields": [
                {
                  "name": "b",
                  "type": "string"
                },
                {
                  "name": "c",
                  "type": "string"
                }
              ]
            }
          }
        ]
      }
    }
  ]
}

As we can see, each record type has a name (it is mandatory in AVRO), and Lenses has generated those names automatically for us (record, record0, record1 etc.).

Set the record name and the namespace of the value schema

We are now going to see how to override that default behavior.

Let’s create and start the new processor with the following SQL:

SET defaults.topic.autocreate=true;
SET defaults.topic.value.avro.record="myRecordName";
SET defaults.topic.value.avro.namespace="myNamespace";

INSERT INTO mytopic_3
SELECT STREAM a as x.a, b as x.y.b, c as x.y.c
FROM mytopic

Notice how we added the new SET statements to the query:

SET defaults.topic.value.avro.record="myRecordName";
SET defaults.topic.value.avro.namespace="myNamespace";

These settings are telling Lenses to set the root record name and namespace to the values specified.

If we now check the value schema for mytopic_3 we get:

{
  "type": "record",
  "name": "myRecordName",
  "namespace": "myNamespace",
  "fields": [
    {
      "name": "x",
      "type": {
        "type": "record",
        "name": "record0",
        "fields": [
          {
            "name": "a",
            "type": "string"
          },
          {
            "name": "y",
            "type": {
              "type": "record",
              "name": "record",
              "fields": [
                {
                  "name": "b",
                  "type": "string"
                },
                {
                  "name": "c",
                  "type": "string"
                }
              ]
            }
          }
        ]
      }
    }
  ]
}

As we can see, the root record element has now name myRecordName and namespace myNamespace.

Notice how the settings did not affect nested records.

Set the record name and the namespace of the key schema

If the key of the generated topic has AVRO format as well, you can use the following analogous settings to control the key record name and namespace:

SET defaults.topic.key.avro.record="myRecordName";
SET defaults.topic.key.avro.namespace="myNamespace";

More control on the topic affected by the setting

A setting like the one we used before for the value schema:

SET defaults.topic.value.avro.record="myRecordName"

will affect all the topics used by the processor.

If you want instead to target a single topic, you can use the topic-specific version:

SET topic.mytopic_3.value.avro.record="myRecordName"

The setting above will override the record name only for topic mytopic_3. Other topics will not be affected and will keep using the default naming strategy.