How to pass DataSet(s) to a function that accepts DataFrame(s) as arguments in Apache Spark using Scala? - scala

Question

I have a library in Scala for Spark which contains many functions.
One example is the following function to unite two dataframes that have different columns:
def appendDF(df2: DataFrame): DataFrame = {
val cols1 = df.columns.toSeq
val cols2 = df2.columns.toSeq
def expr(sourceCols: Seq[String], targetCols: Seq[String]): Seq[Column] = {
targetCols.map({
case x if sourceCols.contains(x) => col(x)
case y => lit(null).as(y)
})
}
// both df's need to pass through `expr` to guarantee the same order, as needed for correct unions.
df.select(expr(cols1, cols1): _*).union(df2.select(expr(cols2, cols1): _*))
}
I would like to use this function (and many more) to Dataset[CleanRow] and not DataFrames. CleanRow is a simple class here that defines the names and types of the columns.
My educated guess is to convert the Dataset into Dataframe using .toDF() method. However, I would like to know whether there are better ways to do it.
From my understanding, there shouldn't be many differences between Dataset and Dataframe since Dataset are just Dataframe[Row]. Plus, I think that from Spark 2.x the APIs for DF and DS have been unified, so I was thinking that I could pass either of them interchangeably, but that's not the case.

Answer 1

If changing signature is possible:
import spark.implicits._
import org.apache.spark.sql.DataFrame
import org.apache.spark.sql.Dataset
def f[T](d: Dataset[T]): Dataset[T] = {d}
// You are able to pass a dataframe:
f(Seq(0,1).toDF()).show
// res1: org.apache.spark.sql.Dataset[org.apache.spark.sql.Row] = [value: int]
// You are also able to pass a dataset:
f(spark.createDataset(Seq(0,1)))
// res2: org.apache.spark.sql.Dataset[Int] = [value: int]