Using uuid as a key results in kafka message with quotes at beginning and end

[lyrst]

Code of Conduct

• I agree to follow this project's Code of Conduct

On what operating system are you seeing the problem?

No response

VS Code version

Version: 1.110.0 (Universal)
Commit: 0870c2a0c7c0564e7631bfed2675573a94ba4455
Date: 2026-03-04T01:20:28.863Z (5 days ago)
Electron: 39.6.0
ElectronBuildId: 13330601
Chromium: 142.0.7444.265
Node.js: 22.22.0
V8: 14.2.231.22-electron.0
OS: Darwin arm64 25.3.0

Version of Confluent extension

2.2.2

To Reproduce

1. Define an avro value schema that allows the message from step 2 (!! No Key schema defined!)
2. Create a json file that contains this data:

{
  "key": "663004D4-CE76-484F-9ADD-9A4B7D0EEEF4",
  "value": {
    "randomValue": "randomKey"
   }
}

3. Publish the message via the plugin

Current vs. Expected behavior

Current:

When I check now in AKHQ how the message was produced, I see the following:

Expected:

I only expect to see the UUID without any quotes.

Relevant log output

Which area(s) are affected? (Select all that apply)

Messages

Additional context

No response

[lyrst]

When I open the message in the message preview, then I see the following:

    "key_metadata": {
      "data_format": "JSON"
    },

But I would expect

    "key_metadata": {
      "data_format": "UTF8_STRING"
    },

[lyrst]

Even if I change the key to a numeric value, it is sent as JSON.

"key": 1234,
  "value": {}

  "metadata": {
    "key_metadata": {
      "data_format": "JSON"
    }
  }

Seems like I am not able to change the format how the key is sent.

[flippingbits]

Thanks for reaching out, lyrst! That's because we consider values without schemas as JSON by default. I'll discuss with the team if we can support other serializers, like a String serializer, too.