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https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/AVRO-3061?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=17294380#comment-17294380
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Ryan Skraba commented on AVRO-3061:
-----------------------------------
Yes, it does "look like" JSON, and it's a frequent source of issues in our
company :/ I'm surprised that there isn't another Jira on this! It's not even
guaranteed to be valid JSON much less valid "Avro-compliant" JSON encoding (if
I remember correctly, binary data isn't escaped quite right).
I would _almost_ prefer that we break the toString representation entirely so
that it doesn't even look like JSON. There's quite a few reasons why
developers should be [strongly discouraged from parsing
toString|https://conscientiousprogrammer.com/blog/2013/12/23/tostring-considered-harmful-part-1/]
output.
The issue with fixing it now, of course, is that it would break developers that
are relying on the "Kinda-Avro-ish JSON" encoding that the Java toString
provides (despite it being potentially fragile and often not compatible with
JsonDecoder, notably around UNIONs). They'd need some sort of heads-up and
"escape route" when migrating to a version that changes the toString for any
reason. A system property, perhaps?
It's worth discussing, precisely because this comes up so often!
> toString implementation on avro objects emits confusing json
> ------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Key: AVRO-3061
> URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/AVRO-3061
> Project: Apache Avro
> Issue Type: Bug
> Components: java
> Affects Versions: 1.10.1
> Reporter: radai rosenblatt
> Priority: Major
>
> toString() for both specific and generic records emits what looks to be avro
> json format, but isnt.
>
> its close enough for new users to try using toString() output where avro json
> is expected.
>
> it would be better if the toString() implementation was changed to use a
> proper JsonEncoder so that the output would actually be valid avro json. it
> would also result in less code overall
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