Better way to send kafka message : JsonNode or Map<String, UserModel>?

Question

I am new to Kafka with Spring Boot.

We can able to send kafka message in Json / String / Streams / JsonNode / Map. So right now in my project I want to send Map to one of my consumers.

So as a steps first we will convert map to JsonNode and then will send JsonNode. At consumer, we will deserilise this JsonNode into map and then will use.

I tried to send Map and I can able to send via kafka. When at consumer i am getting Json String.

So my question is which is the best way to implement in my requirement ?

Answer 1

My opinion - neither.

Use Avro (or Protobuf) model classes that clearly define your types and the Schema Registry

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In other words, Kafka stores bytes. You can pick any serialization format, and you better compress it as well