Splitting row in multiple row in spark-shell

Question

I have imported data in Spark dataframe in spark-shell. Data is filled in it like :

Col1 | Col2 | Col3 | Col4
A1   | 11   | B2   | a|b;1;0xFFFFFF
A1   | 12          


        

Answer 1

Edit after getting this answer about how to make backreference in regexp_replace.

You can use regexp_replace with a backreference, then split twice and explode. It is, imo, cleaner than my original solution

val df = List(
    ("A1"   , "11"   , "B2"   , "a|b;1;0xFFFFFF"),
    ("A1"   , "12"   , "B1"   , "2"),
    ("A2"   , "12"   , "B2"   , "0xFFF45B")
  ).toDF("Col1" , "Col2" , "Col3" , "Col4")

val regExStr = "^([A-z|]+)?;?(\\d+)?;?(0x.*)?$"
val res = df
  .withColumn("backrefReplace",
       split(regexp_replace('Col4,regExStr,"$1;$2;$3"),";"))
  .select('Col1,'Col2,'Col3,
       explode(split('backrefReplace(0),"\\|")).as("letter"),
       'backrefReplace(1)                      .as("digits"),
       'backrefReplace(2)                      .as("hexadecimal")
  )

+----+----+----+------+------+-----------+
|Col1|Col2|Col3|letter|digits|hexadecimal|
+----+----+----+------+------+-----------+
|  A1|  11|  B2|     a|     1|   0xFFFFFF|
|  A1|  11|  B2|     b|     1|   0xFFFFFF|
|  A1|  12|  B1|      |     2|           |
|  A2|  12|  B2|      |      |   0xFFF45B|
+----+----+----+------+------+-----------+

you still need to replace empty strings by nullthough...

---

Previous Answer (somebody might still prefer it):

Here is a solution that sticks to DataFrames but is also quite messy. You can first use regexp_extract three times (possible to do less with backreference?), and finally split on "|" and explode. Note that you need a coalesce for explode to return everything (you still might want to change the empty strings in letter to null in this solution).

val res = df
  .withColumn("alphabets",  regexp_extract('Col4,"(^[A-z|]+)?",1))
  .withColumn("digits",     regexp_extract('Col4,"^([A-z|]+)?;?(\\d+)?;?(0x.*)?$",2))
  .withColumn("hexadecimal",regexp_extract('Col4,"^([A-z|]+)?;?(\\d+)?;?(0x.*)?$",3))
  .withColumn("letter",
     explode(
       split(
         coalesce('alphabets,lit("")),
         "\\|"
       )
     )
   )


res.show    

+----+----+----+--------------+---------+------+-----------+------+
|Col1|Col2|Col3|          Col4|alphabets|digits|hexadecimal|letter|
+----+----+----+--------------+---------+------+-----------+------+
|  A1|  11|  B2|a|b;1;0xFFFFFF|      a|b|     1|   0xFFFFFF|     a|
|  A1|  11|  B2|a|b;1;0xFFFFFF|      a|b|     1|   0xFFFFFF|     b|
|  A1|  12|  B1|             2|     null|     2|       null|      |
|  A2|  12|  B2|      0xFFF45B|     null|  null|   0xFFF45B|      |
+----+----+----+--------------+---------+------+-----------+------+

Note: The regexp part could be so much better with backreference, so if somebody knows how to do it, please comment!