Spark – How to Drop a DataFrame/Dataset column

Spark DataFrame provides a drop() method to drop a column/field from a DataFrame/Dataset. drop() method also used to remove multiple columns at a time from a Spark DataFrame/Dataset. In this article, I will explain ways to drop a columns using Scala example.

Related: Drop duplicate rows from DataFrame

First, let’s create a DataFrame.

  val structureData = Seq(
    Row("James","","Smith","36636","NewYork",3100),
    Row("Michael","Rose","","40288","California",4300),
    Row("Robert","","Williams","42114","Florida",1400),
    Row("Maria","Anne","Jones","39192","Florida",5500),
    Row("Jen","Mary","Brown","34561","NewYork",3000)
  )

  val structureSchema = new StructType()
    .add("firstname",StringType)
    .add("middlename",StringType)
    .add("lastname",StringType)
    .add("id",StringType)
    .add("location",StringType)
    .add("salary",IntegerType)

  val df = spark.createDataFrame(
    spark.sparkContext.parallelize(structureData),structureSchema)
  df.printSchema()

This yields below output.

root
 |-- firstname: string (nullable = true)
 |-- middlename: string (nullable = true)
 |-- lastname: string (nullable = true)
 |-- id: string (nullable = true)
 |-- location: string (nullable = true)
 |-- salary: integer (nullable = true)

Spark DataFrame drop() syntax

Spark drop() has 3 different signatures. In the below sections, I’ve explained using all these signatures with examples.

1) drop(colName : scala.Predef.String) : org.apache.spark.sql.DataFrame
2) drop(colNames : scala.Predef.String*) : org.apache.spark.sql.DataFrame
3) drop(col : org.apache.spark.sql.Column) : org.apache.spark.sql.DataFrame

Drop one column from DataFrame

First and Third signature takes column name as String type and Column type respectively. When you use the third signature make sure you import org.apache.spark.sql.functions.col

  val df2 = df.drop("firstname") //First signature
  df2.printSchema()

  df.drop(df("firstname")).printSchema()

  //import org.apache.spark.sql.functions.col is required
  df.drop(col("firstname")).printSchema() //Third signature

The above 3 examples drops column “firstname” from DataFrame. You can use either one of these according to your need.

root
 |-- middlename: string (nullable = true)
 |-- lastname: string (nullable = true)
 |-- id: string (nullable = true)
 |-- location: string (nullable = true)
 |-- salary: integer (nullable = true)

Drop multiple columns from DataFrame

This uses second signature of the drop() which removes more than one column from a DataFrame.

  //Refering more than one column
  df.drop("firstname","middlename","lastname")
    .printSchema()

  // using array/sequence of columns
  val cols = Seq("firstname","middlename","lastname")
  df.drop(cols:_*)
    .printSchema()

The above two examples remove more than one column at a time from DataFrame. These both yield the same output.

root
 |-- id: string (nullable = true)
 |-- location: string (nullable = true)
 |-- salary: integer (nullable = true)

Complete Example

Below is a complete example of how to drop one column or multiple columns from a Spark DataFrame.

package com.sparkbyexamples.spark.dataframe.examples

import org.apache.spark.sql.{Row, SparkSession}
import org.apache.spark.sql.types.{IntegerType, StringType, StructType}
import org.apache.spark.sql.functions.col
object DropColumn extends App {

  val spark:SparkSession = SparkSession.builder()
    .master("local[5]")
    .appName("SparkByExamples.com")
    .getOrCreate()

  val data = Seq(
    Row("James","","Smith","36636","NewYork",3100),
    Row("Michael","Rose","","40288","California",4300),
    Row("Robert","","Williams","42114","Florida",1400),
    Row("Maria","Anne","Jones","39192","Florida",5500),
    Row("Jen","Mary","Brown","34561","NewYork",3000)
  )

  val schema = new StructType()
    .add("firstname",StringType)
    .add("middlename",StringType)
    .add("lastname",StringType)
    .add("id",StringType)
    .add("location",StringType)
    .add("salary",IntegerType)

  val df = spark.createDataFrame(
    spark.sparkContext.parallelize(data),schema)
  df.printSchema()
  df.show(false)

  df.drop(df("firstname"))
    .printSchema()

  df.drop(col("firstname"))
    .printSchema()

  val df2 = df.drop("firstname")
  df2.printSchema()

  df.drop("firstname","middlename","lastname")
    .printSchema()

  val cols = Seq("firstname","middlename","lastname")
  df.drop(cols:_*)
    .printSchema()
}

This complete example is also available at Spark Examples Github project for references.

Thanks for reading and Happy Learning !!

Related Articles

• How to Add and Update DataFrame Columns in Spark
• How to Rename a DataFrame Column
• Spark Join Types
• Spark DataFrame groupBy()
• Spark Union() & UnionAll() Examples
• Spark Distinct Rows from DataFrame
• Spark Drop, Delete, Truncate Differences
• Spark Drop DataFrame from Cache
• Spark Drop Rows with NULL Values in DataFrame