Send Custom Java Objects to Kafka Topic

Question

I have my custom Java Object and wish to leverage JVM\'s in built serialization to send it to a Kafka topic, but serialization fails with below error

Answer 1

We have 2 Options as listed below

1) If we intend to send custom java objects to producer, We need to create a serializer which implements org.apache.kafka.common.serialization.Serializer and pass that Serializer class during creation of your producer

Code Reference below

public class PayloadSerializer implements org.apache.kafka.common.serialization.Serializer {

    public void configure(Map map, boolean b) {

    }

    public byte[] serialize(String s, Object o) {

       try {
            ByteArrayOutputStream baos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
            ObjectOutputStream oos = new ObjectOutputStream(baos);
            oos.writeObject(o);
            oos.close();
            byte[] b = baos.toByteArray();
            return b;
        } catch (IOException e) {
            return new byte[0];
        }
    }

    public void close() {

    }
}

And set the value serializer accordingly

2) No need to create custom serializer class. Use the existing ByteArraySerializer, but during send follow the process

Java Object -> String (Preferrably JSON represenation instead of toString)->byteArray