Taking value from one dataframe and passing that value into loop of SqlContext - apache-spark

Question

Looking to try do something like this:
I have a dataframe that is one column of ID's called ID_LIST. With that column of id's I would like to pass it into a Spark SQL call looping through ID_LIST using foreach returning the result to another dataframe.
val sqlContext = new org.apache.spark.sql.SQLContext(sc)
val id_list = sqlContext.sql("select distinct id from item_orc")
id_list.registerTempTable("ID_LIST")
id_list.foreach(i => println(i)
id_list println output:
[123]
[234]
[345]
[456]
Trying to now loop through ID_LIST and run a Spark SQL call for each:
id_list.foreach(i => {
val items = sqlContext.sql("select * from another_items_orc where id = " + i
items.foreach(println)
}
First.. not sure how to pull the individual value out, getting this error:
org.apache.spark.sql.AnalysisException: cannot recognize input near '[' '123' ']' in expression specification; line 1 pos 61
Second: how can I alter my code to output the result to a dataframe I can use later ?
Thanks, any help is appreciated!

Answer 1

Answer To First Question
When you perform the "foreach" Spark converts the dataframe into an RDD of type Row. Then when you println on the RDD it prints the Row, the first row being "[123]". It is boxing [] the elements in the row. The elements in the row are accessed by position. If you wanted to print just 123, 234, etc... try
id_list.foreach(i => println(i(0)))
Or you can use native primitive access
id_list.foreach(i => println(i.getString(0))) //For Strings
Seriously... Read the documentation I have linked about Row in Spark. This will transform your code to:
id_list.foreach(i => {
val items = sqlContext.sql("select * from another_items_orc where id = " + i.getString(0))
items.foreach(i => println(i.getString(0)))
})
Answer to Second Question
I have a sneaking suspicion about what you actually are trying to do but I'll answer your question as I have interpreted it.
Let's create an empty dataframe which we will union everything to it in a loop of the distinct items from the first dataframe.
import org.apache.spark.sql.types.{StructType, StringType}
import org.apache.spark.sql.Row
// Create the empty dataframe. The schema should reflect the columns
// of the dataframe that you will be adding to it.
val schema = new StructType()
.add("col1", StringType, true)
var df = ss.createDataFrame(ss.sparkContext.emptyRDD[Row], schema)
// Loop over, select, and union to the empty df
id_list.foreach{ i =>
val items = sqlContext.sql("select * from another_items_orc where id = " + i.getString(0))
df = df.union(items)
}
df.show()
You now have the dataframe df that you can use later.
NOTE: An easier thing to do would probably be to join the two dataframes on the matching columns.
import sqlContext.implicits.StringToColumn
val bar = id_list.join(another_items_orc, $"distinct_id" === $"id", "inner").select("id")
bar.show()