Convert Avro into Byte and Store Byte data into MySQL

Question

I have an Avro schema file customer.avsc. I already successfully created the Avro object using builder, and I can read the avro object. I am wondering how to convert the customer avro object into Byte and store it in the database. Thanks a lot!

    public static void main(String[] args) {

        // we can now build a customer in a "safe" way
        Customer.Builder customerBuilder = Customer.newBuilder();
        customerBuilder.setAge(30);
        customerBuilder.setFirstName("Mark");
        customerBuilder.setLastName("Simpson");
        customerBuilder.setAutomatedEmail(true);
        customerBuilder.setHeight(180f);
        customerBuilder.setWeight(90f);

        Customer customer = customerBuilder.build();
        System.out.println(customer);
        System.out.println(111111);

        // write it out to a file
        final DatumWriter<Customer> datumWriter = new SpecificDatumWriter<>(Customer.class);

        try (DataFileWriter<Customer> dataFileWriter = new DataFileWriter<>(datumWriter)) {
            dataFileWriter.create(customer.getSchema(), new File("customer-specific.avro"));
            dataFileWriter.append(customer);
            System.out.println("successfully wrote customer-specific.avro");
        } catch (IOException e){
            e.printStackTrace();
        }

Answer 1

I am using BinaryEncoder to solve this problem. In this case, the avro could be converted into Byte and saved into the MySQL database. Then when receiving the data from kafka (byte -> MySQL -> Debezium Connector -> Kafka -> Consumer API), then I can just decode the payload of that byte column into avro / Java object again with the same schema. Here is the code.

        Customer.Builder customerBuilder = Customer.newBuilder();
        customerBuilder.setAge(20);
        customerBuilder.setFirstName("first");
        customerBuilder.setLastName("last");
        customerBuilder.setAutomatedEmail(true);
        customerBuilder.setHeight(180f);
        customerBuilder.setWeight(90f);

        Customer customer = customerBuilder.build();

        DatumWriter<SpecificRecord> writer = new SpecificDatumWriter<SpecificRecord>(
            customer.getSchema());
        ByteArrayOutputStream out = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
        BinaryEncoder encoder = EncoderFactory.get().binaryEncoder(out, null);
        writer.write(customer, encoder);
        encoder.flush();
        out.close();

        byte[] serializedBytes = out.toByteArray();
        System.out.println("Sending message in bytes : " + serializedBytes);
//        //String serializedHex = Hex.encodeHexString(serializedBytes);
//        //System.out.println("Serialized Hex String : " + serializedHex);
//        KeyedMessage<String, byte[]> message = new KeyedMessage<String, byte[]>("page_views", serializedBytes);
//        producer.send(message);
//        producer.close();

        DatumReader<Customer> userDatumReader = new SpecificDatumReader<Customer>(Customer.class);

        Decoder decoder = DecoderFactory.get().binaryDecoder(serializedBytes, null);

        SpecificRecord datum = userDatumReader.read(null, decoder);
        System.out.println(datum);