AvroConvert 2.6.2

Avro format combines readability of JSON and compression of binary data serialization.

Introduction article

Apache Wiki

General information

Documentation

Benefits

The main purpose of the project was to enhance communication between microservices. Replacing JSON with Avro brought three main benefits:

• Decreased the communication time between microservices
• Reduced the network traffic by about 30%
• Increased communication security - the data was not visible in plain JSON text

| Converter | Request time [ms] | Compressed size [kB] |
|-------------------------|-----------------------|----------------------|
| Json | 1076 | 9945 |
| Avro (default) | 509 | 2435 |
| Avro (Headless) | 465 | 2434 |
| Avro (Deflate encoding) | 453 | 206 |

In the purpose of introducing Avro API, I've written an article, which you can read here: https://xabe.net/why-avro-api-is-the-best-choice/

It contains also description of the format, detailed results of the benchmarks and implementation details.

Conclusion: <br>
Using Avro for communication between your services significantly reduces communication time and network traffic. Additionally choosing encoding (compression algorithm) can improve the results even further.

Features

• Serialization and deserialization data in Avro format
• Extended support for C# data structures: Dictionary, List, DateTime and many others
• Support for codecs: deflate, snappy, gzip
• Support for Attributes: DataContract, DataMember, DefaultValue, NullableSchema
• "Headless" - serialization and deserialization based on provided schema

Full Changelog

Related packages

- Library containing functionalities, which enable communication between microservices via Http using Avro data format

- Library containing extensions for Confluent Kafka platform - used together with Kafka Consumer and Producer

Code samples

//Serialization
 byte[] avroObject = AvroConvert.Serialize(object yourObject);

//Deserialization
CustomClass deserializedObject = AvroConvert.Deserialize<CustomClass>(byte[] avroObject);

//Generate Avro schema

//Model
public class SimpleTestClass
{
	public string justSomeProperty { get; set; }

	public long andLongProperty { get; set; }
}


//Action
string schemaInJsonFormat = AvroConvert.GenerateSchema(typeof(SimpleTestClass));


//Produces following schema:
"{"type":"record","name":"AvroConvert.SimpleTestClass","fields":[{"name":"justSomeProperty","type":"string"},{"name":"andLongProperty","type":"long"}]}"

//Read schema from Avro file
string schemaInJsonFormat = AvroConvert.GetSchema(byte[] avroObject)

Full Documentation

License

AvroConvert is licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) - see License for details

For commercial purposes purchase AvroConvert on website - Xabe.net

Contribution

We want to improve AvroConvert as much as possible. If you have any idea, found next possible feature, optimization opportunity or better way for integration, leave a comment or pull request.