### 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-16483Closes#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>
0c850c71e7