How to pivot Spark DataFrame?

Question

I am starting to use Spark DataFrames and I need to be able to pivot the data to create multiple columns out of 1 column with multiple rows. There is built in functionality

Answer 1

I overcame this by writing a for loop to dynamically create a SQL query. Say I have:

id  tag  value
1   US    50
1   UK    100
1   Can   125
2   US    75
2   UK    150
2   Can   175

and I want:

id  US  UK   Can
1   50  100  125
2   75  150  175

I can create a list with the value I want to pivot and then create a string containing the SQL query I need.

val countries = List("US", "UK", "Can")
val numCountries = countries.length - 1

var query = "select *, "
for (i <- 0 to numCountries-1) {
  query += """case when tag = """" + countries(i) + """" then value else 0 end as """ + countries(i) + ", "
}
query += """case when tag = """" + countries.last + """" then value else 0 end as """ + countries.last + " from myTable"

myDataFrame.registerTempTable("myTable")
val myDF1 = sqlContext.sql(query)

I can create similar query to then do the aggregation. Not a very elegant solution but it works and is flexible for any list of values, which can also be passed in as an argument when your code is called.