rdump to avro fails for basic use

[jeffbryner]

flow.record.version 3.21

Attempting a basic export to avro

uv run target-query /path/to/file.E01 -f users -q | uv run rdump -vvv -w users.avro

fails with

2026-05-13T15:56:35.967729Z [error    ] rdump encountered a fatal error: Unsupported Avro type: path [flow.record.tools.rdump]
2026-05-13T15:56:35.967790Z [error    ] Full traceback                 [flow.record.tools.rdump]
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Users/jeffbryner/development/test/.venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/flow/record/tools/rdump.py", line 419, in main
    record_writer.write(rec)
  File "/Users/jeffbryner/development/test/.venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/flow/record/adapter/avro.py", line 72, in write
    self.schema = descriptor_to_schema(self.desc)
                  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/Users/jeffbryner/development/test/.venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/flow/record/adapter/avro.py", line 159, in descriptor_to_schema
    raise ValueError(f"Unsupported Avro type: {field_type}")

Or

uv run target-query /path/to/file.E01 -f users -q | uv run rdump -vvv -w avro://users.avro

fails with:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Users/jeffbryner/development/test/.venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/flow/record/tools/rdump.py", line 419, in main
    record_writer.write(rec)
  File "/Users/jeffbryner/development/testvil_hackathon/.venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/flow/record/adapter/avro.py", line 72, in write
    self.schema = descriptor_to_schema(self.desc)
                  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/Users/jeffbryner/development/test/.venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/flow/record/adapter/avro.py", line 159, in descriptor_to_schema
    raise ValueError(f"Unsupported Avro type: {field_type}")
ValueError: Unsupported Avro type: path

Other export formats work fine including jsonl, duckdb, etc

[jeffbryner]

FWIW: Analysis by cline,

Overview

The failure occurs because the avro adapter in the flow-record library (.venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/flow/record/adapter/avro.py) lacks a mapping for the path field type to an Avro primitive type. When rdump tries to serialize the output of the users query, it encounters the home field, which is explicitly typed as a path, and throws an error.

Unlike SQLite and DuckDB adapters that default unknown types to TEXT, the Avro adapter performs a strict lookup. We can fix this by adding "path": "string" (and its system-specific variants) to the AVRO_TYPE_MAP dictionary directly within the virtual environment's package.

Key Changes

• .venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/flow/record/adapter/avro.py: Update the AVRO_TYPE_MAP dictionary to map path, posix_path, and windows_path to Avro's "string" type.

Not sure this would work though, appears that it would happen with any unknown field type encountered?

[yunzheng]

This is indeed due to a missed mapping in the AVRO adapter. Is this something you want to try and fix yourself? I'll be happy to review it.