Apache software foundation provides Avro with various releases. You can download the required release from Apache mirrors. Let us see, how to set up the environment to work with Avro −

Downloading Avro

To download Apache Avro, proceed with the following −

• Open the web page Apache.org. You will see the homepage of Apache Avro as shown below −

• Click on project → releases. You will get a list of releases.

• Select the latest release which leads you to a download link.

• mirror.nexcess is one of the links where you can find the list of all libraries of different languages that Avro supports as shown below −

You can select and download the library for any of the languages provided. In this tutorial, we use Java. Hence download the jar files avro-1.7.7.jar and avro-tools-1.7.7.jar.

Avro with Eclipse

To use Avro in Eclipse environment, you need to follow the steps given below −

• Step 1. Open eclipse.

• Step 2. Create a project.

• Step 3. Right-click on the project name. You will get a shortcut menu.

• Step 4. Click on Build Path. It leads you to another shortcut menu.

• Step 5. Click on Configure Build Path… You can see Properties window of your project as shown below −

• Step 6. Under libraries tab, click on ADD EXternal JARs… button.

• Step 7. Select the jar file avro-1.77.jar you have downloaded.

• Step 8. Click on OK.

Avro with Maven

You can also get the Avro library into your project using Maven. Given below is the pom.xml file for Avro.

<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="   http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">

   <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
   <groupId>Test</groupId>
   <artifactId>Test</artifactId>
   <version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>

   <build>
      <sourceDirectory>src</sourceDirectory>
      <plugins>
         <plugin>
            <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>3.1</version>
		
            <configuration>
               <source>1.7</source>
               <target>1.7</target>
            </configuration>
		
         </plugin>
      </plugins>
   </build>

   <dependencies>
      <dependency>
         <groupId>org.apache.avro</groupId>
         <artifactId>avro</artifactId>
         <version>1.7.7</version>
      </dependency>
	
      <dependency>
         <groupId>org.apache.avro</groupId>
         <artifactId>avro-tools</artifactId>
         <version>1.7.7</version>
      </dependency>
	
      <dependency>
         <groupId>org.apache.logging.log4j</groupId>
         <artifactId>log4j-api</artifactId>
         <version>2.0-beta9</version>
      </dependency>
	
      <dependency>
         <groupId>org.apache.logging.log4j</groupId>
         <artifactId>log4j-core</artifactId>
         <version>2.0-beta9</version>
      </dependency>
	
   </dependencies>

</project>

Setting Classpath

To work with Avro in Linux environment, download the following jar files −

• avro-1.77.jar
• avro-tools-1.77.jar
• log4j-api-2.0-beta9.jar
• og4j-core-2.0.beta9.jar.

Copy these files into a folder and set the classpath to the folder, in the ./bashrc file as shown below.

#class path for Avro
export CLASSPATH=$CLASSPATH://home/Hadoop/Avro_Work/jars/*