spark-instrumented-optimizer/sql
fqaiser94@gmail.com 0c850c71e7 [SPARK-32511][SQL] Add dropFields method to Column class
### What changes were proposed in this pull request?

Added a new `dropFields` method to the `Column` class.
This method should allow users to drop a `StructField` in a `StructType` column (with similar semantics to the `drop` method on `Dataset`).

### Why are the changes needed?

Often Spark users have to work with deeply nested data e.g. to fix a data quality issue with an existing `StructField`. To do this with the existing Spark APIs, users have to rebuild the entire struct column.

For example, let's say you have the following deeply nested data structure which has a data quality issue (`5` is missing):
```
import org.apache.spark.sql._
import org.apache.spark.sql.functions._
import org.apache.spark.sql.types._

val data = spark.createDataFrame(sc.parallelize(
      Seq(Row(Row(Row(1, 2, 3), Row(Row(4, null, 6), Row(7, 8, 9), Row(10, 11, 12)), Row(13, 14, 15))))),
      StructType(Seq(
        StructField("a", StructType(Seq(
          StructField("a", StructType(Seq(
            StructField("a", IntegerType),
            StructField("b", IntegerType),
            StructField("c", IntegerType)))),
          StructField("b", StructType(Seq(
            StructField("a", StructType(Seq(
              StructField("a", IntegerType),
              StructField("b", IntegerType),
              StructField("c", IntegerType)))),
            StructField("b", StructType(Seq(
              StructField("a", IntegerType),
              StructField("b", IntegerType),
              StructField("c", IntegerType)))),
            StructField("c", StructType(Seq(
              StructField("a", IntegerType),
              StructField("b", IntegerType),
              StructField("c", IntegerType))))
          ))),
          StructField("c", StructType(Seq(
            StructField("a", IntegerType),
            StructField("b", IntegerType),
            StructField("c", IntegerType))))
        )))))).cache

data.show(false)
+---------------------------------+
|a                                |
+---------------------------------+
|[[1, 2, 3], [[4,, 6], [7, 8, 9]]]|
+---------------------------------+
```
Currently, to drop the missing value users would have to do something like this:
```
val result = data.withColumn("a",
  struct(
    $"a.a",
    struct(
      struct(
        $"a.b.a.a",
        $"a.b.a.c"
      ).as("a"),
      $"a.b.b",
      $"a.b.c"
    ).as("b"),
    $"a.c"
  ))

result.show(false)
+---------------------------------------------------------------+
|a                                                              |
+---------------------------------------------------------------+
|[[1, 2, 3], [[4, 6], [7, 8, 9], [10, 11, 12]], [13, 14, 15]]|
+---------------------------------------------------------------+
```
As you can see above, with the existing methods users must call the `struct` function and list all fields, including fields they don't want to change. This is not ideal as:
>this leads to complex, fragile code that cannot survive schema evolution.
[SPARK-16483](https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/SPARK-16483)

In contrast, with the method added in this PR, a user could simply do something like this to get the same result:
```
val result = data.withColumn("a", 'a.dropFields("b.a.b"))
result.show(false)
+---------------------------------------------------------------+
|a                                                              |
+---------------------------------------------------------------+
|[[1, 2, 3], [[4, 6], [7, 8, 9], [10, 11, 12]], [13, 14, 15]]|
+---------------------------------------------------------------+

```

This is the second of maybe 3 methods that could be added to the `Column` class to make it easier to manipulate nested data.
Other methods under discussion in [SPARK-22231](https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/SPARK-22231) include `withFieldRenamed`.
However, this should be added in a separate PR.

### Does this PR introduce _any_ user-facing change?

Only one minor change. If the user submits the following query:
```
df.withColumn("a", $"a".withField(null, null))
```
instead of throwing:
```
java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: requirement failed: fieldName cannot be null
```
it will now throw:
```
java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: requirement failed: col cannot be null
```
I don't believe its should be an issue to change this because:
- neither message is incorrect
- Spark 3.1.0 has yet to be released

but please feel free to correct me if I am wrong.

### How was this patch tested?

New unit tests were added. Jenkins must pass them.

### Related JIRAs:
More discussion on this topic can be found here:
- https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/SPARK-22231
- https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/SPARK-16483

Closes #29322 from fqaiser94/SPARK-32511.

Lead-authored-by: fqaiser94@gmail.com <fqaiser94@gmail.com>
Co-authored-by: fqaiser94 <fqaiser94@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Wenchen Fan <wenchen@databricks.com>
2020-08-13 03:28:25 +00:00
..
catalyst [SPARK-32511][SQL] Add dropFields method to Column class 2020-08-13 03:28:25 +00:00
core [SPARK-32511][SQL] Add dropFields method to Column class 2020-08-13 03:28:25 +00:00
hive [SPARK-32599][SQL][TESTS] Check the TEXTFILE file format in HiveSerDeReadWriteSuite 2020-08-12 20:59:59 +09:00
hive-thriftserver [SPARK-32492][SQL][FOLLOWUP][TEST-MAVEN] Fix jenkins maven jobs 2020-08-05 13:56:11 +00:00
create-docs.sh [SPARK-31550][SQL][DOCS] Set nondeterministic configurations with general meanings in sql configuration doc 2020-04-27 17:08:52 +09:00
gen-sql-api-docs.py [SPARK-31474][SQL][FOLLOWUP] Replace _FUNC_ placeholder with functionname in the note field of expression info 2020-04-23 13:33:04 +09:00
gen-sql-config-docs.py [SPARK-31550][SQL][DOCS] Set nondeterministic configurations with general meanings in sql configuration doc 2020-04-27 17:08:52 +09:00
gen-sql-functions-docs.py [SPARK-31562][SQL] Update ExpressionDescription for substring, current_date, and current_timestamp 2020-04-26 11:46:52 -07:00
mkdocs.yml [SPARK-30731] Update deprecated Mkdocs option 2020-02-19 17:28:58 +09:00
README.md [SPARK-30510][SQL][DOCS] Publicly document Spark SQL configuration options 2020-02-09 19:20:47 +09:00

Spark SQL

This module provides support for executing relational queries expressed in either SQL or the DataFrame/Dataset API.

Spark SQL is broken up into four subprojects:

  • Catalyst (sql/catalyst) - An implementation-agnostic framework for manipulating trees of relational operators and expressions.
  • Execution (sql/core) - A query planner / execution engine for translating Catalyst's logical query plans into Spark RDDs. This component also includes a new public interface, SQLContext, that allows users to execute SQL or LINQ statements against existing RDDs and Parquet files.
  • Hive Support (sql/hive) - Includes extensions that allow users to write queries using a subset of HiveQL and access data from a Hive Metastore using Hive SerDes. There are also wrappers that allow users to run queries that include Hive UDFs, UDAFs, and UDTFs.
  • HiveServer and CLI support (sql/hive-thriftserver) - Includes support for the SQL CLI (bin/spark-sql) and a HiveServer2 (for JDBC/ODBC) compatible server.

Running ./sql/create-docs.sh generates SQL documentation for built-in functions under sql/site, and SQL configuration documentation that gets included as part of configuration.md in the main docs directory.