Avro types

Pure JavaScript implementation of the Avro specification.

Features

• Blazingly fast and compact serialization! Typically faster than JSON with much smaller encodings.
• All the Avro goodness and more: type inference, schema evolution, ...
• Support for serializing arbitrary JavaScript objects.
• Unopinionated 64-bit integer compatibility.

Installation

$ npm install @avro/types

@avro/types is compatible with all versions of node.js since 0.11.

Examples

Inside a node.js module, or using browserify:

const {Type} = require('@avro/types');

• Encode and decode values from a known schema:

  const type = Type.forSchema({
    type: 'record',
    fields: [
      {name: 'kind', type: {type: 'enum', symbols: ['CAT', 'DOG']}},
      {name: 'name', type: 'string'}
    ]
  });
  
  const buf = type.toBuffer({kind: 'CAT', name: 'Albert'}); // Encoded buffer.
  const val = type.fromBuffer(buf); // = {kind: 'CAT', name: 'Albert'}

• Infer a value's schema and encode similar values:

  const type = Type.forValue({
    city: 'Cambridge',
    zipCodes: ['02138', '02139'],
    visits: 2
  });
  
  // We can use `type` to encode any values with the same structure:
  const bufs = [
    type.toBuffer({city: 'Seattle', zipCodes: ['98101'], visits: 3}),
    type.toBuffer({city: 'NYC', zipCodes: [], visits: 0})
  ];

6.0

General

• Removed TypeScript typings (please help bring them back!).
• Removed Browserify-specific shims. Serialization functionality is natively compatible with @avro/types.
• Removed IDL support from parse.

Types (@avro/types)

• Renamed a few methods (the previous names are still available and will be deprecated in 6.1):
  • decode to binaryDecodeAt
  • encode to binaryEncodeAt
  • fromBuffer to binaryDecode
  • toBuffer to binaryEncode
  • compareBuffers to binaryCompare
• Added a checkValid method to check whether a value matches the type, producing actionable error messages.
• Replaced name() method with name and branchName properties.
• Removed fingerprint, inspect, and random methods.
• Removed deprecated getters (getValuesType, getSchema, ...).
• Replaced fromString (resp. toString) with fromJSON (resp. toJSON).
• Removed clone options.
• Updated isValid to reject unknown fields by default and renamed the noUndeclaredFields option to allowUndeclaredFields.

Containers & streams (@avro/streams)

No changes.

RPC services (@avro/services)

Overhauled the API: services are now more composable, RPCs are easier to instrument, natively support promises, and much more. This functionality requires node>=7.

IDL parsing (@avro/idl)

• Added a synchronous version of assembleProtocol: assembleProtocolSync.
• Removed readSchema, and readProtocol.