hdrachmann/AvroConvert

AvroConvert

Rapid Avro serializer for C# .NET

Docs

Avro format combines readability of JSON and compression of binary data serialization.

Benefits

The main purpose of the project was to enhance HTTP communication between microservices. Replacing JSON with Avro brought three main benefits:

Decreased the communication time between microservices
Reduced the network traffic by about 30%
Increased communication security - the data was not visible in plain JSON text

Features

	AvroConvert	Apache.Avro	Newtonsoft.Json
Rapid serialization	✔️	✔️	✔️
Easy to use	✔️	❌	✔️
Built-in compression	✔️	✔️	❌
Low memory allocation	✔️	✔️	✔️
Support for C# data structures: Dictionary, List, DateTime...	✔️	❌	✔️
Support for compression codecs	Deflate Snappy GZip Brotli	Deflate	❌
Readable schema of data structure	✔️	✔️	✔️
Data is encrypted	✔️	✔️	❌

Full Changelog

Benchmark

Results of BenchmarkDotNet:

Converter	Request Time [ms]	Allocated Memory [MB]	Compressed Size [kB]
Json	672.3	52.23	6044
Avro	384.7	76.58	2623
Json_Gzip	264.1	88.32	514
Avro_Gzip	181.2	75.05	104
Json_Brotli	222.5	86.15	31
Avro_Brotli	193.5	74.75	31

Article describing Avro format specification and benchmark methodology: https://xabe.net/why-avro-api-is-the-best-choice/

Conclusion:
Using Avro for communication between your services significantly reduces communication time and network traffic. Additionally choosing encoding (compression algorithm) can improve the results even further.

Code samples

Serialization

 byte[] avroObject = AvroConvert.Serialize(object yourObject);

Deserialization

CustomClass deserializedObject = AvroConvert.Deserialize<CustomClass>(byte[] avroObject);

Read schema from Avro object

string schemaInJsonFormat = AvroConvert.GetSchema(byte[] avroObject)

Deserialization of large collection of Avro objects one by one

using (var reader = AvroConvert.OpenDeserializer<CustomClass>(new MemoryStream(avroObject)))
{
    while (reader.HasNext())
    {
        var item = reader.ReadNext();
        // process item
    }
}

Full Documentation

Related packages

- Library containing functionalities, which enable communication between microservices via Http using Avro data format

- Library containing extensions for Confluent Kafka platform - used together with Kafka Consumer and Producer

License

The project is CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 licensed.
For commercial purposes purchase AvroConvert on website - Xabe.net

Contribution

We want to improve AvroConvert as much as possible. If you have any idea, found next possible feature, optimization opportunity or better way for integration, leave a comment or pull request.

hdrachmann / AvroConvert