Why kafka-avro-console-producer doesn't honour the default value for the field?

Question

Although default is defined for a field, kafka-avro-console-producer ignores it completely:

$ kafka-avro-console-producer --broker-list localhost:9092 --topic test-avro \
--property schema.registry.url=http://localhost:8081 --property \
value.schema='{"type":"record","name":"myrecord1","fields": \
[{"name":"f1","type":"string"},{"name": "f2", "type": "int", "default": 0}]}'

{"f1": "value1"}

org.apache.kafka.common.errors.SerializationException: Error 
deserializing json {"f1": "value1"} to Avro of schema 
{"type":"record","name":"myrecord1","fields": 
[{"name":"f1","type":"string"},{"name":"f2","type":"int","default":0}]}
Caused by: org.apache.avro.AvroTypeException: Expected int. Got END_OBJECT
    at org.apache.avro.io.JsonDecoder.error(JsonDecoder.java:698)
    at org.apache.avro.io.JsonDecoder.readInt(JsonDecoder.java:172)
    at org.apache.avro.io.ValidatingDecoder.readInt(ValidatingDecoder.java:83)
    at org.apache.avro.generic.GenericDatumReader.readInt(GenericDatumReader.java:511)
    at org.apache.avro.generic.GenericDatumReader.readWithoutConversion(GenericDatumReader.java:182)
    at org.apache.avro.generic.GenericDatumReader.read(GenericDatumReader.java:152)
    at org.apache.avro.generic.GenericDatumReader.readField(GenericDatumReader.java:240)
    at org.apache.avro.generic.GenericDatumReader.readRecord(GenericDatumReader.java:230)
    at org.apache.avro.generic.GenericDatumReader.readWithoutConversion(GenericDatumReader.java:174)
    at org.apache.avro.generic.GenericDatumReader.read(GenericDatumReader.java:152)
    at org.apache.avro.generic.GenericDatumReader.read(GenericDatumReader.java:144)
    at io.confluent.kafka.formatter.AvroMessageReader.jsonToAvro(AvroMessageReader.java:213)
    at io.confluent.kafka.formatter.AvroMessageReader.readMessage(AvroMessageReader.java:180)
    at kafka.tools.ConsoleProducer$.main(ConsoleProducer.scala:54)
    at kafka.tools.ConsoleProducer.main(ConsoleProducer.scala)

How to use it then in order to accept the default? Top level config is set to "BACKWARD" compatibility Level check, although I don't believe that has anything to do with the question. This schema is version 2, and version 1 was defined with only f1 field, but as I said, I don't think that matters.

Answer 1

As defined in the Avro spec

default: A default value for this field, used when reading instances that lack this field

Therefore, the producer still needs to supply that field.

I'm not sure it's possible to completely exclude a field when using the Avro console producer, because even if you make the field as nullable as Giorgos shows, you still need to explicitly set it.