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https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/AVRO-583?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=12890456#action_12890456
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Scott Carey commented on AVRO-583:
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This error message confused me as well when first learning Avro. The message
led me in circles and does not point to what is wrong unless you already have a
deeper understanding of Avro.
Note that what is wrong here is the _type_ , not the name, and to a beginner
the first 'gut' response to that message is 'I set the name to "mymap", not
"map", wtf?'.
If it said 'invalid name for type identifier, "map"' it would be better, or
ideally something more informative about what is valid in that location and why.
The confusion for a beginner is that you see examples with fields like:
{"name": "myfield", "type": "string" }
and so it makes sense to think that other built-in types work the same way, and
so
{"name": "mymap", "type": "map", "values": "string"}
would work.
The current error message does nothing to inform the beginner that "map" and
"array" are different than "string" and "int" etc. one is a named type and the
other is not.
I'm not sure how much context we have when this error is thrown to be more
informative, but it should be easy to do better than the current message.
> Bad error message if you try and name an array or a map:
> org.apache.avro.SchemaParseException: Undefined name: "map"
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Key: AVRO-583
> URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/AVRO-583
> Project: Avro
> Issue Type: Bug
> Components: java
> Affects Versions: 1.3.2
> Reporter: Sam Pullara
> Priority: Minor
> Fix For: 1.4.0
>
>
> Error message should be something like "You can't name a map"
> Broken schema:
> {
> "name":"annoyance",
> "type":"record",
> "fields":[
> {
> "name":"mymap",
> "type":"map",
> "values":"string"
> }
> ]
> }
> Error:
> org.apache.avro.SchemaParseException: Undefined name: "map"
> at org.apache.avro.Schema.parse(Schema.java:876)
> at org.apache.avro.Schema.parse(Schema.java:912)
> at org.apache.avro.Schema.parse(Schema.java:796)
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