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https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/KAFKA-8455?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=16853697#comment-16853697
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Cem Ozen commented on KAFKA-8455:
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Hi [~vvcephei] and everyone,
I am new to Kafka development, can I pick this issue up? It would help me
familiarize myself with the codebase, build process, review process and the KIP
process. Plus, I love these kind of features to help developers avoid shooting
themselves in the foot by making things explicit. This looks like a very good
feature to have in this regard!
> Add NothingSerde to Serdes
> --------------------------
>
> Key: KAFKA-8455
> URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/KAFKA-8455
> Project: Kafka
> Issue Type: Improvement
> Components: streams
> Reporter: John Roesler
> Priority: Minor
> Labels: beginner, needs-kip, newbie, newbie++
>
> Often, when reading an input topic, the key is expected to be null, but
> there's actually no way to represent this fact in Consumed, leading to
> confusing type signatures down the topology.
> For example, you might use the BytesSerde, but then you have a
> KStream<Bytes,...>. When maintaining a large application, this becomes a
> hazard, since you'd need to "be really careful" not to try and dereference
> the key at any point, since you actually know it's always null.
> Much better would be to actually represent the fact that the key is null,
> using the Void type. One such example of this is the NothingSerde I wrote
> here:
> https://github.com/confluentinc/kafka-streams-examples/blob/5.2.1-post/src/test/java/io/confluent/examples/streams/IntegrationTestUtils.java#L465
> After some conversations, I've come to believe this would actually be a
> useful addition to the main Serdes collection.
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