Spark Dataframe distinguish columns with duplicate

Question

So as I know in Spark Dataframe, that for multiple columns can have the same name as shown in below dataframe snapshot:

[
Row(a=107831, f=SparseVector(5, {0: 0.0, 1: 0.0, 2: 0.0, 3: 0.0, 4: 0.0}), a=107831, f=SparseVector(5, {0: 0.0, 1: 0.0, 2: 0.0, 3: 0.0, 4: 0.0})),
Row(a=107831, f=SparseVector(5, {0: 0.0, 1: 0.0, 2: 0.0, 3: 0.0, 4: 0.0}), a=125231, f=SparseVector(5, {0: 0.0, 1: 0.0, 2: 0.0047, 3: 0.0, 4: 0.0043})),
Row(a=107831, f=SparseVector(5, {0: 0.0, 1: 0.0, 2: 0.0, 3: 0.0, 4: 0.0}), a=145831, f=SparseVector(5, {0: 0.0, 1: 0.2356, 2: 0.0036, 3: 0.0, 4: 0.4132})),
Row(a=107831, f=SparseVector(5, {0: 0.0, 1: 0.0, 2: 0.0, 3: 0.0, 4: 0.0}), a=147031, f=SparseVector(5, {0: 0.0, 1: 0.0, 2: 0.0, 3: 0.0, 4: 0.0})),
Row(a=107831, f=SparseVector(5, {0: 0.0, 1: 0.0, 2: 0.0, 3: 0.0, 4: 0.0}), a=149231, f=SparseVector(5, {0: 0.0, 1: 0.0032, 2: 0.2451, 3: 0.0, 4: 0.0042}))
]

Above result is created by join with a dataframe to itself, you can see there are 4 columns with both two a and f.

The problem is is there when I try to do more calculation with the a column, I cant find a way to select the a, I have try df[0] and df.select('a'), both returned me below error mesaage:

AnalysisException: Reference 'a' is ambiguous, could be: a#1333L, a#1335L.

Is there anyway in Spark API that I can distinguish the columns from the duplicated names again? or maybe some way to let me change the column names?

Answer 1

You can use def drop(col: Column) method to drop the duplicated column,for example:

DataFrame:df1

+-------+-----+
| a     | f   |
+-------+-----+
|107831 | ... |
|107831 | ... |
+-------+-----+

DataFrame:df2

+-------+-----+
| a     | f   |
+-------+-----+
|107831 | ... |
|107831 | ... |
+-------+-----+

when I join df1 with df2, the DataFrame will be like below:

val newDf = df1.join(df2,df1("a")===df2("a"))

DataFrame:newDf

+-------+-----+-------+-----+
| a     | f   | a     | f   |
+-------+-----+-------+-----+
|107831 | ... |107831 | ... |
|107831 | ... |107831 | ... |
+-------+-----+-------+-----+

Now, we can use def drop(col: Column) method to drop the duplicated column 'a' or 'f', just like as follows:

val newDfWithoutDuplicate = df1.join(df2,df1("a")===df2("a")).drop(df2("a")).drop(df2("f"))