Select Specific Columns from Spark DataFrame

Question

I have loaded CSV data into a Spark DataFrame   I need to slice this dataframe into two different dataframes  where each one contains a set of columns from the original dataframe   How do I select a subset into a Spark dataframe  based on columns

User · Answer

Let s say our parent Dataframe has  n  columns  we can create  x  child DataFrames  Lets consider 2 in our case     The columns for the child Dataframe can be chosen as per desire from any of the parent Dataframe columns     Consider source has 10 columns and we want to split into 2 DataFrames that contains columns referenced from the parent Dataframe   The columns for the child Dataframe can be decided using the select Dataframe API   val parentDF   spark read format  csv   load   path of the CSV file    val Child1 DF   parentDF select  col1   col2   col3   col9   col10   show    val child2 DF   parentDF select  col5    col6   col7   col8   col1   col2   show     Notice that the column count in the child dataframes can differ in length and will be less than the parent dataframe column count   we can also refer to the column names without mentioning the real names using the positional indexes of the desired column from the parent dataframe   Import spark implicits first which acts as a helper class for usage of  -notation to access the columns using the positional indexes  import spark implicits   import org apache spark sql functions    val child3 DF    parentDF select   c0    c1    c2    c8    c9   show     we can also select column basing on certain conditions  Lets say we want only even numbered columns to be selected in the child dataframe  By even we refer to even indexed columns and index being starting from  0    val parentColumns   parentDF columns toList   res0  List String    List  c0   c1   c2   c3   c4   c5   c6   c7  c8  c9   val evenParentColumns    res0 zipWithIndex filter    2   2    0  map     1  toSeq  res1  scala collection immutable Seq String    List  c0   c2   c4   c6  c8    Now feed these columns to be selected from the parentDF Note that the select API need seq type arguments So we converted the  evenParentColumns  to Seq collection  val child4 DF   parentDF select res1 head  res1 tail     show     This will show the even indexed columns from the parent Dataframe               c0      c2      c4     c6     c8         ITE00100554 TMAX null   E  1     TE00100554  TMIN null   E  4     GM000010962 PRCP null   E  7    So Now we are left with the even numbered columns in the dataframe   Similarly we can also apply other operations to the Dataframe column like shown below  val child5 DF   parentDF select    c0      c8    1  show     So by many ways as mentioned we can select the columns in the Dataframe

User · Answer

i liked dehasis approach  because it allowed me to select  rename and convert columns in one step  However I had to adjust it to make it work for me in PySpark  from pyspark sql functions import col  spark read csv path  select        col   c0   alias  quot stn quot   cast  String          col   c1   alias  quot wban quot   cast  String          col   c2   alias  quot lat quot   cast  Double          col   c3   alias  quot lon quot   cast  Double                where   c2 isNotNull  amp  amp    c3 isNotNull  amp  amp    c2     0 0  amp  amp    c3     0 0

User · Answer

You can use the below code to select columns based on their index  position   You can alter the numbers for variable colNos to select only those columns  import org apache spark sql functions col  val colNos   Seq 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35  val Df 01   Df select colNos 01 map Df columns map col      Df 01 show 20  false

User · Answer

Just by using select select you can select particular columns  give them readable names and cast them  For example like this     spark read csv path  select              c0 alias  stn   cast StringType               c1 alias  wban   cast StringType               c2 alias  lat   cast DoubleType               c3 alias  lon   cast DoubleType                       where   c2 isNotNull  amp  amp    c3 isNotNull  amp  amp    c2     0 0  amp  amp    c3     0 0

User · Answer

If you want to split you dataframe into two different ones  do two selects on it with the different columns you want    val sourceDf   spark read csv       val df1   sourceDF select  first column    second column    third column    val df2   sourceDF select  first column    second column    third column     Note that this of course means that the sourceDf would be evaluated twice  so if it can fit into distributed memory and you use most of the columns across both dataframes it might be a good idea to cache it   It it has many extra columns that you don t need  then you can do a select on it first to select on the columns you will need so it would store all that extra data in memory

User · Answer

Solved   just use select method for the dataframe to select columns    val df spark read csv  C   Users  Ahmed  Desktop  cabs trajectories  cabs trajectories  green  2014  green tripdata 2014-09 csv    val df1 df select   c0     this would subset the first column of the dataframe

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Problem was to select columns of on dataframe after joining with other   dataframe       I tried below and select the columns of salaryDf from the joined   dataframe       Hope this will help           val empDf spark read option  header   true   csv   data tech txt            val salaryDf spark read option  header   true   csv   data salary txt            val joinData  empDf join salaryDf empDf col  first       salaryDf col  first   and  empDf col  last       salaryDf col  last               below will select the colums of salaryDf only         val finalDF joinData select salaryDf columns map  salaryDf col        same way we can select the columns of empDf joinData select empDf columns map  empDf col

User · Answer

There are multiple options  especially in Scala  to select a subset of columns of that Dataframe  The following lines will all select the two columns colA and  colB  import spark implicits   import org apache spark sql functions  col  column  expr   inputDf select col  quot colA quot    col  quot colB quot    inputDf select inputDf col  quot colA quot    inputDf col  quot colB quot    inputDf select column  quot colA quot    column  quot colB quot    inputDf select expr  quot colA quot    expr  quot colB quot        only available in Scala inputDf select   quot colA quot     quot colB quot   inputDf select  colA   colB     makes use of Scala s Symbol     selecting columns based on a given iterable of Strings val selectedColumns  Seq Column    Seq  quot colA quot    quot colB quot   map c   gt  col c   inputDf select selectedColumns          select the first or last 2 columns inputDf selectExpr inputDf columns take 2       inputDf selectExpr inputDf columns takeRight 2        The usage of   is possible as Scala provides an implicit class that converts a String into a Column using the method    implicit class StringToColumn val sc   scala StringContext  extends scala AnyRef     def   args   scala Any     org apache spark sql ColumnName        compiled code         Typically  when you want to derive one DataFrame to multiple DataFrames it might improve your performance if you persist the original DataFrame before creating the others  At the end you can unpersist the original DataFrame  Keep in mind that Columns are not resolved at compile time but only when it is compared to the column names of your catalog which happens during analyser phase of the query execution  In case you need stronger type safety you could create a Dataset  For completeness  here is the csv to try out above code     csv file     colA colB colC    1  quot foo quot   quot bar quot   val inputDf   spark read format  quot csv quot   option  quot header quot    quot true quot   load csvFilePath      resulting DataFrame schema root   -- colA  string  nullable   true    -- colB  string  nullable   true    -- colC  string  nullable   true

[scala] Select Specific Columns from Spark DataFrame

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