How to create Custom serializer in kafka?

Question

There is only few serializer available like,

org.apache.kafka.common.serialization.StringSerializer

How can we create our own custom serializer ?

Answer 1

Here you have an example to use your own serializer/deserializer for the Kafka message value. For Kafka message key is the same thing.

We want to send a serialized version of MyMessage as Kafka value and deserialize it again into a MyMessage object at consumer side.

Serializing MyMessage in producer side.

You should create a serializer class that implements org.apache.kafka.common.serialization.Serializer

serialize() method do the work, receiving your object and returning a serialized version as bytes array.

public class MyValueSerializer implements Serializer<MyMessage>
{
    private boolean isKey;

    @Override
    public void configure(Map<String, ?> configs, boolean isKey)
    {
        this.isKey = isKey;
    }

    @Override
    public byte[] serialize(String topic, MyMessage message)
    {
        if (message == null) {
            return null;
        }

        try {

            (serialize your MyMessage object into bytes)

            return bytes;

        } catch (IOException | RuntimeException e) {
            throw new SerializationException("Error serializing value", e);
        }
    }

    @Override
    public void close()
    {

    }
}

final IntegerSerializer keySerializer = new IntegerSerializer();
final MyValueSerializer myValueSerializer = new MyValueSerializer();
final KafkaProducer<Integer, MyMessage> producer = new KafkaProducer<>(props, keySerializer, myValueSerializer);

int messageNo = 1;
int kafkaKey = messageNo;
MyMessage kafkaValue = new MyMessage();
ProducerRecord producerRecord = new ProducerRecord<>(topic, kafkaKey, kafkaValue);
producer.send(producerRecord, new DemoCallBack(logTag, startTime, messageNo, strValue));

Deserializing MyMessage in consumer side.

You should create a deserializer class that implements org.apache.kafka.common.serialization.Deserializer

deserialize() method do the work, receiving serialized value as bytes array and returning your object.

public class MyValueDeserializer implements Deserializer<MyMessage>
{
    private boolean isKey;

    @Override
    public void configure(Map<String, ?> configs, boolean isKey)
    {
        this.isKey = isKey;
    }

    @Override
    public MyMessage deserialize(String s, byte[] value)
    {
        if (value == null) {
            return null;
        }

        try {

            (deserialize value into your MyMessage object)

            MyMessage message = new MyMessage();
            return message;

        } catch (IOException | RuntimeException e) {
            throw new SerializationException("Error deserializing value", e);
        }
    }

    @Override
    public void close()
    {

    }
}

Then use it like this:

final IntegerDeserializer keyDeserializer = new IntegerDeserializer();
final MyValueDeserializer myValueDeserializer = new MyValueDeserializer();
final KafkaConsumer<Integer, MyMessage> consumer = new KafkaConsumer<>(props, keyDeserializer, myValueDeserializer);

ConsumerRecords<Integer, MyMessage> records = consumer.poll(1000);
for (ConsumerRecord<Integer, MyMessage> record : records) {

    int kafkaKey = record.key();
    MyMessage kafkaValue = record.value();

    ...
}