Read and write streaming Avro data

Apache Avro is a commonly used data serialization system in the streaming world. A typical solution is to put data in Avro format in Apache Kafka, metadata in Confluent Schema Registry, and then run queries with a streaming framework that connects to both Kafka and Schema Registry.

Databricks supports the from_avro and to_avro functions to build streaming pipelines with Avro data in Kafka and metadata in Schema Registry. The function to_avro encodes a column as binary in Avro format and from_avro decodes Avro binary data into a column. Both functions transform one column to another column, and the input/output SQL data type can be a complex type or a primitive type.

Note

The from_avro and to_avro functions:

  • Are available in Python, Scala, and Java.

  • Can be passed to SQL functions in both batch and streaming queries.

Also see Avro file data source.

Basic example

Similar to from_json and to_json, you can use from_avro and to_avro with any binary column, but you must specify the Avro schema manually.

import org.apache.spark.sql.avro.functions._
import org.apache.avro.SchemaBuilder

// When reading the key and value of a Kafka topic, decode the
// binary (Avro) data into structured data.
// The schema of the resulting DataFrame is: <key: string, value: int>
val df = spark
  .readStream
  .format("kafka")
  .option("kafka.bootstrap.servers", servers)
  .option("subscribe", "t")
  .load()
  .select(
    from_avro($"key", SchemaBuilder.builder().stringType()).as("key"),
    from_avro($"value", SchemaBuilder.builder().intType()).as("value"))

// Convert structured data to binary from string (key column) and
// int (value column) and save to a Kafka topic.
dataDF
  .select(
    to_avro($"key").as("key"),
    to_avro($"value").as("value"))
  .writeStream
  .format("kafka")
  .option("kafka.bootstrap.servers", servers)
  .option("topic", "t")
  .start()

jsonFormatSchema example

You can also specify a schema as a JSON string. For example, if /tmp/user.avsc is:

{
  "namespace": "example.avro",
  "type": "record",
  "name": "User",
  "fields": [
    {"name": "name", "type": "string"},
    {"name": "favorite_color", "type": ["string", "null"]}
  ]
}

You can create a JSON string:

from pyspark.sql.avro.functions import from_avro, to_avro

jsonFormatSchema = open("/tmp/user.avsc", "r").read()

Then use the schema in from_avro:

# 1. Decode the Avro data into a struct.
# 2. Filter by column "favorite_color".
# 3. Encode the column "name" in Avro format.

output = df\
  .select(from_avro("value", jsonFormatSchema).alias("user"))\
  .where('user.favorite_color == "red"')\
  .select(to_avro("user.name").alias("value"))

Example with Schema Registry

If your cluster has a Schema Registry service, from_avro can work with it so that you don’t need to specify the Avro schema manually.

The following example demonstrates reading a Kafka topic “t”, assuming the key and value are already registered in Schema Registry as subjects “t-key” and “t-value” of types STRING and INT:

import org.apache.spark.sql.avro.functions._

val schemaRegistryAddr = "https://myhost:8081"
val df = spark
  .readStream
  .format("kafka")
  .option("kafka.bootstrap.servers", servers)
  .option("subscribe", "t")
  .load()
  .select(
    from_avro($"key", "t-key", schemaRegistryAddr).as("key"),
    from_avro($"value", "t-value", schemaRegistryAddr).as("value"))

For to_avro, the default output Avro schema might not match the schema of the target subject in the Schema Registry service for the following reasons:

  • The mapping from Spark SQL type to Avro schema is not one-to-one. See Supported types for Spark SQL -> Avro conversion.

  • If the converted output Avro schema is of record type, the record name is topLevelRecord and there is no namespace by default.

If the default output schema of to_avro matches the schema of the target subject, you can do the following:

// The converted data is saved to Kafka as a Kafka topic "t".
dataDF
  .select(
    to_avro($"key", lit("t-key"), schemaRegistryAddr).as("key"),
    to_avro($"value", lit("t-value"), schemaRegistryAddr).as("value"))
.writeStream
.format("kafka")
.option("kafka.bootstrap.servers", servers)
.option("topic", "t")
.start()

Otherwise, you must provide the schema of the target subject in the to_avro function:

// The Avro schema of subject "t-value" in JSON string format.
val avroSchema = ...
// The converted data is saved to Kafka as a Kafka topic "t".
dataDF
  .select(
    to_avro($"key", lit("t-key"), schemaRegistryAddr).as("key"),
    to_avro($"value", lit("t-value"), schemaRegistryAddr, avroSchema).as("value"))
.writeStream
.format("kafka")
.option("kafka.bootstrap.servers", servers)
.option("topic", "t")
.start()

Authenticate to an external Confluent Schema Registry

In Databricks Runtime 12.1 and above, you can authenticate to an external Confluent Schema Registry. The following examples demonstrate how to configure your schema registry options to include auth credentials and API keys.

import org.apache.spark.sql.avro.functions._
import scala.collection.JavaConverters._

val schemaRegistryAddr = "https://confluent-schema-registry-endpoint"
val schemaRegistryOptions = Map(
      "confluent.schema.registry.basic.auth.credentials.source" -> "USER_INFO",
      "confluent.schema.registry.basic.auth.user.info" -> "confluentApiKey:confluentApiSecret")

val df = spark
  .readStream
  .format("kafka")
  .option("kafka.bootstrap.servers", servers)
  .option("subscribe", "t")
  .load()
  .select(
    from_avro($"key", "t-key", schemaRegistryAddr, schemaRegistryOptions.asJava).as("key"),
    from_avro($"value", "t-value", schemaRegistryAddr, schemaRegistryOptions.asJava).as("value"))

// The converted data is saved to Kafka as a Kafka topic "t".
dataDF
  .select(
    to_avro($"key", lit("t-key"), schemaRegistryAddr, schemaRegistryOptions.asJava).as("key"),
    to_avro($"value", lit("t-value"), schemaRegistryAddr, schemaRegistryOptions.asJava).as("value"))
.writeStream
.format("kafka")
.option("kafka.bootstrap.servers", servers)
.option("topic", "t")
.save()

// The Avro schema of subject "t-value" in JSON string format.
val avroSchema = ...

// The converted data is saved to Kafka as a Kafka topic "t".
dataDF
  .select(
    to_avro($"key", lit("t-key"), schemaRegistryAddr, schemaRegistryOptions.asJava).as("key"),
    to_avro($"value", lit("t-value"), schemaRegistryAddr, schemaRegistryOptions.asJava, avroSchema).as("value"))
.writeStream
.format("kafka")
.option("kafka.bootstrap.servers", servers)
.option("topic", "t")
.save()

from pyspark.sql.functions import col, lit
from pyspark.sql.avro.functions import from_avro, to_avro

schema_registry_address = "https://confluent-schema-registry-endpoint"
schema_registry_options = {
  "confluent.schema.registry.basic.auth.credentials.source": 'USER_INFO',
  "confluent.schema.registry.basic.auth.user.info": f"{key}:{secret}"
}

df = (spark
  .readStream
  .format("kafka")
  .option("kafka.bootstrap.servers", servers)
  .option("subscribe", "t")
  .load()
  .select(
    from_avro(
      data = col("key"),
      options = schema_registry_options,
      subject = "t-key",
      schemaRegistryAddress = schema_registry_address
    ).alias("key"),
    from_avro(
      data = col("value"),
      options = schema_registry_options,
      subject = "t-value",
      schemaRegistryAddress = schema_registry_address
    ).alias("value")
  )
)

# The converted data is saved to Kafka as a Kafka topic "t".
data_df
  .select(
    to_avro(
      data = col("key"),
      subject = lit("t-key"),
      schemaRegistryAddress = schema_registry_address,
      options = schema_registry_options
    ).alias("key"),
    to_avro(
      data = col("value"),
      subject = lit("t-value"),
      schemaRegistryAddress = schema_registry_address,
      options = schema_registry_options
    ).alias("value")
  )
.writeStream
.format("kafka")
.option("kafka.bootstrap.servers", servers)
.option("topic", "t")
.save()

# The Avro schema of subject "t-value" in JSON string format.
avro_schema = ...

# The converted data is saved to Kafka as a Kafka topic "t".
data_df
  .select(
    to_avro(col("key"), lit("t-key"), schema_registry_address, schema_registry_options).alias("key"),
    to_avro(col("value"), lit("t-value"), schema_registry_address, schema_registry_options, avro_schema).alias("value"))
.writeStream
.format("kafka")
.option("kafka.bootstrap.servers", servers)
.option("topic", "t")
.save()