title: Defining Avro schema in Java, how do I handle timestamps or date values?
body: <p>I have a beam pipeline that takes json data, parses it, then writes it as parquet files to a GCS bucket. I dont know how to handle dates and timestamps when defining the Avro schema in Java. It doesn't give the option for Dates or similar. Only primitives. Right now everything works but my date stays as a string. Does anyone have any suggestions for defining dates/timestamps in an Avro schema object and also the Java objects to pass it in as?</p>
  
  <pre><code>static final Schema SCHEMA = SchemaBuilder.record("Record")
  .namespace("com.foo").fields().requiredString("val1")
  .requiredString("val2").requiredString("timestamp").endRecord();
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Sample timestamp:</p>
  
  <pre><code>String timestamp = "2018-12-06T21:22:35.700Z";
  </code></pre>