Create an empty avro file from avro schema - Pig doesn't like an empty directory

empty_avro_from_schema.sh

#1. create a sample avro schema
cat > example.avsc << EOF
{"namespace": "example.avro",
 "type": "record",
 "name": "User",
 "fields": [
     {"name": "name", "type": "string"},
     {"name": "favorite_number",  "type": ["int", "null"]},
     {"name": "favorite_color", "type": ["string", "null"]}
 ]
}
EOF

#2. create an empty file
touch empty

#3. create an empty avro file with the avro schema and empty file
avro-tools fromjson --schema-file example.avsc empty > empty_example.avro

#4. check avro schema and empty data from the empty avro file
avro-tools getschema empty_example.avro
avro-tools tojson empty_example.avro

#5. convert to empty parquet
cp empty_example.avro /tmp/
cat << EOF | pig -x local
empty_example = load 'file:///tmp/empty_example.avro' using AvroStorage();
SET parquet.compression gzip;
store empty_example into 'file:///tmp/empty_example_parquet' using parquet.pig.ParquetStorer;
quit
EOF

#6. verify
$ ls -l /tmp/empty_example_parquet
-rw-r--r-- 1 hdfs hdfs 231 May 25 08:58 _common_metadata
-rw-r--r-- 1 hdfs hdfs 231 May 25 08:58 _metadata
-rw-r--r-- 1 hdfs hdfs 231 May 25 08:58 part-m-00000.gz.parquet
-rw-r--r-- 1 hdfs hdfs   0 May 25 08:58 _SUCCESS

$ parquet-tools schema file:///tmp/empty_example_parquet/part-m-00000.gz.parquet
message pig_schema {
  optional binary name (UTF8);
  optional int32 favorite_number;
  optional binary favorite_color (UTF8);
}