producer: java.lang.String cannot be cast to [B about jruby-kafka

[bvenable]

UPDATE: fixed with the following code:

@codec.on_event do |event|
  begin
bytes = event.to_java_bytes
    @producer.sendMsg(@topic_id,nil,bytes)
  rescue LogStash::ShutdownSignal

I'll probably make a PR for this and my graylog2-kafka codec once I've done some testing and polishing. The codec just basically makes an array containing a hash of the event's string fields, a hash of the integer fields, an empty hash and a long integer timestamp (epoch + ms). This is to match the spec for the Graylog2 Kafka input.

Mainly I want to see if this will be less CPU intensive than sending messages in GELF, which I believe it will be. I also need to add threading to the logstash-kafka output to achieve what I'm looking for, though.

[joekiller]

I haven't had a chance to review this but am glad you have a good direction. Pull requests are welcome. Regardless, thanks for the analysis as others are curious about using another encoder as well.