how to Serialize .Net Class to Avro.Generic.GenericRecord for publishing into kafka topic?

Question

I am trying to find a way/helper to convert.Net Class to Avro.Generic.GenericRecord . Currently, I am manually adding field-name and field-value to Generic record. Is there a serializer/converter which I can use to convert the object to generic record and publish on to a kafka topic.

class Plant
{
 public long Id { get; set; }
 public string Name { get; set; }
 public List<PlantProperties> PlantProperties{ get; set; }
}
class PlantProperties
{
 public long Leaves{ get; set; }
 public string Color{ get; set; }
}

Please suggest.

Answer 1

Assuming you are using the Confluent Schema Regsitry, you can use their .NET client¹

https://github.com/confluentinc/confluent-kafka-dotnet

Copied from the examples folder

    using (var serdeProvider = new AvroSerdeProvider(avroConfig))
    using (var producer = new Producer<string, GenericRecord>(producerConfig, serdeProvider.GetSerializerGenerator<string>(), serdeProvider.GetSerializerGenerator<GenericRecord>()))
    {
        Console.WriteLine($"{producer.Name} producing on {topicName}. Enter user names, q to exit.");

        int i = 0;
        string text;
        while ((text = Console.ReadLine()) != "q")
        {
            var record = new GenericRecord(s);
            record.Add("name", text);
            record.Add("favorite_number", i++);
            record.Add("favorite_color", "blue");

            producer
                .ProduceAsync(topicName, new Message<string, GenericRecord> { Key = text, Value = record })
                .ContinueWith(task => task.IsFaulted
                    ? $"error producing message: {task.Exception.Message}"
                    : $"produced to: {task.Result.TopicPartitionOffset}");
        }
    }

    cts.Cancel();
}

Where, in your case, update the record.Add uses accordingly

---

However, since you have a class, therefore, you should try to use SpecificRecord, rather than serializing back and forth between Avro and a .NET class via a GenericRecord. See the README section on the AvroGen tool for examples of this

_{1. I'm not aware of an alternative .NET library}