Are you using Kryo or Java serialization? I found this post useful: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/23962796/kryo-readobject-cause-nullpointerexception-with-arraylist
If using kryo, you need to register the classes with kryo, something like this: sc.registerKryoClasses(Array( classOf[ConfigurationProperty], classOf[Event] )) Or create a registrator something like this: class ODSKryoRegistrator extends KryoRegistrator { override def registerClasses(kryo: Kryo) { kryo.register(classOf[ConfigurationProperty], new AvroSerializer[ConfigurationProperty]()) kryo.register(classOf[Event], new AvroSerializer[Event]())) } I encountered a similar error since several of the Avor core classes are not marked Serializable. HTH. Todd On Tue, May 5, 2015 at 7:09 PM, Pankaj Deshpande <ppa...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi I am using Spark 1.3.1 to read an avro file stored on HDFS. The avro > file was created using Avro 1.7.7. Similar to the example mentioned in > http://www.infoobjects.com/spark-with-avro/ > I am getting a nullPointerException on Schema read. It could be a avro > version mismatch. Has anybody had a similar issue with avro. > > > Thanks >