Hadoop DistributedCache is deprecated - what is the preferred API?

Question

My map tasks need some configuration data, which I would like to distribute via the Distributed Cache.

The Hadoop MapReduce Tutorial shows the usage of the Distribut

Answer 1

I did not use job.addCacheFile(). Instead I used -files option like "-files /path/to/myfile.txt#myfile" as before. Then in the mapper or reducer code I use the method below:

/**
 * This method can be used with local execution or HDFS execution. 
 * 
 * @param context
 * @param symLink
 * @param throwExceptionIfNotFound
 * @return
 * @throws IOException
 */
public static File findDistributedFileBySymlink(JobContext context, String symLink, boolean throwExceptionIfNotFound) throws IOException
{
    URI[] uris = context.getCacheFiles();
    if(uris==null||uris.length==0)
    {
        if(throwExceptionIfNotFound)
            throw new RuntimeException("Unable to find file with symlink '"+symLink+"' in distributed cache");
        return null;
    }
    URI symlinkUri = null;
    for(URI uri: uris)
    {
        if(symLink.equals(uri.getFragment()))
        {
            symlinkUri = uri;
            break;
        }
    }   
    if(symlinkUri==null)
    {
        if(throwExceptionIfNotFound)
            throw new RuntimeException("Unable to find file with symlink '"+symLink+"' in distributed cache");
        return null;
    }
    //if we run this locally the file system URI scheme will be "file" otherwise it should be a symlink
    return "file".equalsIgnoreCase(FileSystem.get(context.getConfiguration()).getScheme())?(new File(symlinkUri.getPath())):new File(symLink);

}

Then in mapper/reducer:

@Override
protected void setup(Context context) throws IOException, InterruptedException
{
    super.setup(context);

    File file = HadoopUtils.findDistributedFileBySymlink(context,"myfile",true);
    ... do work ...
}

Note that if I used "-files /path/to/myfile.txt" directly then I need to use "myfile.txt" to access the file since that is the default symlink name.