Filtering DataFrame using the length of a column

Question

I want to filter a DataFrame using a condition related to the length of a column, this question might be very easy but I didn\'t find any related question in th

Answer 1

In Spark >= 1.5 you can use size function:

from pyspark.sql.functions import col, size

df = sqlContext.createDataFrame([
    (["L", "S", "Y", "S"],  ),
    (["L", "V", "I", "S"],  ),
    (["I", "A", "N", "A"],  ),
    (["I", "L", "S", "A"],  ),
    (["E", "N", "N", "Y"],  ),
    (["E", "I", "M", "A"],  ),
    (["O", "A", "N", "A"],  ),
    (["S", "U", "S"],  )], 
    ("tokens", ))

df.where(size(col("tokens")) <= 3).show()

## +---------+
## |   tokens|
## +---------+
## |[S, U, S]|
## +---------+

In Spark < 1.5 an UDF should do the trick:

from pyspark.sql.types import IntegerType
from pyspark.sql.functions import udf

size_ = udf(lambda xs: len(xs), IntegerType())

df.where(size_(col("tokens")) <= 3).show()

## +---------+
## |   tokens|
## +---------+
## |[S, U, S]|
## +---------+

If you use HiveContext then size UDF with raw SQL should work with any version:

df.registerTempTable("df")
sqlContext.sql("SELECT * FROM df WHERE size(tokens) <= 3").show()

## +--------------------+
## |              tokens|
## +--------------------+
## |ArrayBuffer(S, U, S)|
## +--------------------+

For string columns you can either use an udf defined above or length function:

from pyspark.sql.functions import length

df = sqlContext.createDataFrame([("fooo", ), ("bar", )], ("k", ))
df.where(length(col("k")) <= 3).show()

## +---+
## |  k|
## +---+
## |bar|
## +---+