AvroParquetOutputFormat – Unable to Write Arrays with Null Elements

I’m using v1.11.1 of the parquet-mr library as part of a Java application that takes Avro records and writes them into Parquet files using the AvroParquetOutputFormat. There are Avro records with array type fields that will have null elements, e.g.

[ "Foo", "Bar", null, "Baz"].

Here’s an example Avro schema:

{
  "type": "record",
  "name": "NullLists",
  "namespace": "com.test",
  "fields": [
    {
      "name": "KeyID",
      "type": "string"
    },
    {
      "name": "NullableList",
      "type": [
        "null",
        {
            "type": "array",
            "items": [
                "null",
                "string"
            ]
        }
      ],
      "default": null
    }
  ]
}

I’m trying to write the following record:

{
  "KeyID": "0",
  "NullableList": [
    "foo",
    null,
    "baz"
  ]
}

I thought I could use the 3-level list writer to support this, however, it results in the following exception:

Caused by: java.lang.ClassCastException: repeated binary array (STRING) is not a group
        at org.apache.parquet.schema.Type.asGroupType(Type.java:250)
        at org.apache.parquet.avro.AvroWriteSupport$ThreeLevelListWriter.writeCollection(AvroWriteSupport.java:612)
        at org.apache.parquet.avro.AvroWriteSupport$ListWriter.writeList(AvroWriteSupport.java:397)
        at org.apache.parquet.avro.AvroWriteSupport.writeValueWithoutConversion(AvroWriteSupport.java:355)
        at org.apache.parquet.avro.AvroWriteSupport.writeValue(AvroWriteSupport.java:278)
        at org.apache.parquet.avro.AvroWriteSupport.writeRecordFields(AvroWriteSupport.java:191)
        at org.apache.parquet.avro.AvroWriteSupport.write(AvroWriteSupport.java:165)
        at org.apache.parquet.hadoop.InternalParquetRecordWriter.write(InternalParquetRecordWriter.java:128)

Is this kind of record supported? I have also tried the parquet.avro.add-list-element-records option set to false as well, with no luck.

EDIT: I have created a Parquet JIRA for tracking this issue.

Answer

For those interested – this required a patch, and it was merged to master here. Corresponding JIRA.