Storing null values in avro files

Question

I have some json data that looks like this:

  {
    \"id\": 1998983092,
    \"name\": \"Test Name 1\",
    \"type\": \"search string\",
    \"creationDate\": \"2         


        

Answer 1

To be able to set Avro field to null you should allow this in Avro schema, by adding null as one of the possible types of the field. Take a look on example from Avro documentation:

{
  "type": "record",
  "name": "MyRecord",
  "fields" : [
    {"name": "userId", "type": "long"},              // mandatory field
    {"name": "userName", "type": ["null", "string"]} // optional field 
  ]
}

here userName is declared as composite type which could be either null or string. This kind of definition allows to set userName field to null. As contrast userId can only contain long values, hence attempt to set userId to null will result in NullPointerException.