Hey Andrew (Bell),
I'm working on a cookbook and this would be a great addition. Let me know
if you'd like to contribute a section on metadata descriptions.
Will reach out once an initial draft is ready.

Thanks
Arnav

On Wed, Oct 15, 2025 at 2:55 AM Andrew Lamb <[email protected]> wrote:

> For additional spec reading pleasure, the format of the parquet.thrift file
> is Thrift Interface Definition Language[1].
>
> Parquet metadata is stored using the binary Thrift Compact Protocol[2].
>
> [1]: https://github.com/apache/thrift/blob/master/doc/specs/idl.md
> [2]:
>
> https://github.com/apache/thrift/blob/master/doc/specs/thrift-compact-protocol.md
>
> On Tue, Oct 14, 2025 at 5:04 PM Sylvain Lesage <[email protected]
> >
> wrote:
>
> > Maybe the comments in the specification (
> >
> https://github.com/apache/parquet-format/blob/master/src/main/thrift/parquet.thrift
> )
> > are sufficiently clear?
> >
> >
> > On Tuesday, 14 October 2025 at 10:50 PM, Andrew Bell <
> > [email protected]> wrote:
> >
> > >
> > >
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > Is there a document that explains the metadata (
> > > https://parquet.apache.org/docs/file-format/metadata) in English? I
> can
> > > read code, but I'd rather not :) There seems to be some hand-wavy
> > language
> > > that defines certain bits, but I haven't found anything that defines
> each
> > > field in the metadata or anything that really defines the format itself
> > > other than the metadata picture and this:
> > > https://parquet.apache.org/docs/file-format
> > >
> > > Thanks,
> > >
> > > --
> > > Andrew Bell
> > > [email protected]
> >
>

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