Is this a valid Avro schema?

[Kamesh Kompella]

Hi there,
             First, please look at the following schema 

{"name": "user_record",
  "namespace": "com.user",
  "type": "record",
  "fields" : [ 
    {"name": "name", "type": "string"},
    {"name": "id", "type": "long"}
  ]}

and the following JSON:  

{"name": “Foo", “id": 42}

When I run avro-tools with the option fromjson, I get a .avro file. Stuff works.

If I enclose the schema above into array as shown below (I bolded the array 
begin and end in red for clarity), avro-tools (version 1.8.1) throws the 
following exception and dies. 


[{"name": "user_record",
  "namespace": "com.user",
  "type": "record",
  "fields" : [ 
    {"name": "name", "type": "string"},
    {"name": "id", "type": "long"}
  ]}]

I get the following exception: 

Exception in thread "main" org.apache.avro.AvroTypeException: Unknown union 
branch name at org.apache.avro.io.JsonDecoder.readIndex(JsonDecoder.java:445)

Does it make sense to enclose a schema into array? Is this a bug in avro-tools 
or is this an invalid schema? The exception above seems to indicate that a 
schema file may not begin with a JSON array of schemas. 

The documentation seems to indicate schema may be defined as union of other 
other schemas.

I cloned the code base and I could not locate a single instance of avsc file in 
it that defined its schema as a JSON array. Hence, the question.

I appreciate your response.

Regards
Kamesh