How to deserialize BigDecimal value received from kafka broker through debezium CDC mechanism?

I have a couple of microservices developed using spring boot and each has its own Postgres database. These microservices exchange data with a CDC mechanism provided by debezium platform through kafka broker and kafka connect. I have a microservice A that stores some entities with a BigDecimal attribute. Another microservice B depends on the data stored by A so it gets it through kafka topics as a message like the following:

"after":{"id":"267e8ba0-4986-447d-8328-315c839875c3","coefficient":"AZA=","created_at":1559950327672000,"label":"External Agent","updated_at":1559950327672000}

The coefficient attribute is a BigDecimal and it is stored in microservice A database as a BigDecimal (4.00).

How come 4.00 is converted to “AZA=”? Is “AZA=” some encoding format to preserve the BigDecimal precision? How to go from “AZA=” to 4.0 again?

To note that jackson fails to deserialize the string value of “AZA=” to a BigDecimal value with the exception:

com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.exc.InvalidFormatException: Cannot deserialize value of type `java.math.BigDecimal` from String "AZA=": not a valid representation
at [Source: (String)"{"id":"267e8ba0-4986-447d-8328-315c839875c3","coefficient":"AZA=","created_at":1559950327672000,"label":"External Agent","updated_at":1559950327672000}"; line: 1, column: 60] (through reference chain: org.perfometer.performanceservice.entities.ActorTypeEntity["coefficient"])
at com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.exc.InvalidFormatException.from(InvalidFormatException.java:67)
at com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.DeserializationContext.weirdStringException(DeserializationContext.java:1549)
at com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.DeserializationContext.handleWeirdStringValue(DeserializationContext.java:911)
at com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.deser.std.NumberDeserializers$BigDecimalDeserializer.deserialize(NumberDeserializers.java:955)
at com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.deser.std.NumberDeserializers$BigDecimalDeserializer.deserialize(NumberDeserializers.java:922)
at com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.deser.impl.MethodProperty.deserializeAndSet(MethodProperty.java:127)
at com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.deser.BeanDeserializer.vanillaDeserialize(BeanDeserializer.java:288)
at com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.deser.BeanDeserializer.deserialize(BeanDeserializer.java:151)
at com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ObjectMapper._readMapAndClose(ObjectMapper.java:4013)
at com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ObjectMapper.readValue(ObjectMapper.java:3004)
at org.perfometer.performanceservice.services.impl.ActorTypeServiceImpl.consumeActorTypeMessages(ActorTypeServiceImpl.java:123)
at org.perfometer.performanceservice.services.impl.ActorTypeServiceImpl$$FastClassBySpringCGLIB$$944d568c.invoke(<generated>)
at org.springframework.cglib.proxy.MethodProxy.invoke(MethodProxy.java:218)
at org.springframework.aop.framework.CglibAopProxy$CglibMethodInvocation.invokeJoinpoint(CglibAopProxy.java:749)
at org.springframework.aop.framework.ReflectiveMethodInvocation.proceed(ReflectiveMethodInvocation.java:163)
at org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.TransactionAspectSupport.invokeWithinTransaction(TransactionAspectSupport.java:295)
at org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.TransactionInterceptor.invoke(TransactionInterceptor.java:98)
at org.springframework.aop.framework.ReflectiveMethodInvocation.proceed(ReflectiveMethodInvocation.java:186)
at org.springframework.aop.framework.CglibAopProxy$DynamicAdvisedInterceptor.intercept(CglibAopProxy.java:688)
at org.perfometer.performanceservice.services.impl.ActorTypeServiceImpl$$EnhancerBySpringCGLIB$$167173df.consumeActorTypeMessages(<generated>)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:62)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:498)
at org.springframework.messaging.handler.invocation.InvocableHandlerMethod.doInvoke(InvocableHandlerMethod.java:171)
at org.springframework.messaging.handler.invocation.InvocableHandlerMethod.invoke(InvocableHandlerMethod.java:120)
at org.springframework.kafka.listener.adapter.HandlerAdapter.invoke(HandlerAdapter.java:48)
at org.springframework.kafka.listener.adapter.MessagingMessageListenerAdapter.invokeHandler(MessagingMessageListenerAdapter.java:283)
at org.springframework.kafka.listener.adapter.RecordMessagingMessageListenerAdapter.onMessage(RecordMessagingMessageListenerAdapter.java:79)
at org.springframework.kafka.listener.adapter.RecordMessagingMessageListenerAdapter.onMessage(RecordMessagingMessageListenerAdapter.java:50)
at org.springframework.kafka.listener.KafkaMessageListenerContainer$ListenerConsumer.doInvokeOnMessage(KafkaMessageListenerContainer.java:1263)
at org.springframework.kafka.listener.KafkaMessageListenerContainer$ListenerConsumer.invokeOnMessage(KafkaMessageListenerContainer.java:1256)
at org.springframework.kafka.listener.KafkaMessageListenerContainer$ListenerConsumer.doInvokeRecordListener(KafkaMessageListenerContainer.java:1217)
at org.springframework.kafka.listener.KafkaMessageListenerContainer$ListenerConsumer.doInvokeWithRecords(KafkaMessageListenerContainer.java:1198)
at org.springframework.kafka.listener.KafkaMessageListenerContainer$ListenerConsumer.invokeRecordListener(KafkaMessageListenerContainer.java:1118)
at org.springframework.kafka.listener.KafkaMessageListenerContainer$ListenerConsumer.invokeListener(KafkaMessageListenerContainer.java:933)
at org.springframework.kafka.listener.KafkaMessageListenerContainer$ListenerConsumer.pollAndInvoke(KafkaMessageListenerContainer.java:749)
at org.springframework.kafka.listener.KafkaMessageListenerContainer$ListenerConsumer.run(KafkaMessageListenerContainer.java:698)
at java.util.concurrent.Executors$RunnableAdapter.call(Executors.java:511)
at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:266)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:748)

Any hint or any help will be appreciated! thanks!

Answer

this is solution for Java – https://debezium.io/documentation/faq/#how_to_retrieve_decimal_field_from_binary_representation

Also please check decimal.handling.mode option for other ways how BigDecimal can be encoded into the message.