PySpark join dataframes and merge contents of specific columns - pyspark

Question

My goal is to merge two dataframes on the column id, and perform a somewhat complex merge on another column that contains JSON we can call data.
Suppose I have the DataFrame df1 that looks like this:
id | data
---------------------------------
42 | {'a_list':['foo'],'count':1}
43 | {'a_list':['scrog'],'count':0}
And I'm interested in merging with a similar, but different DataFrame df2:
id | data
---------------------------------
42 | {'a_list':['bar'],'count':2}
44 | {'a_list':['baz'],'count':4}
And I would like the following DataFrame, joining and merging properties from the JSON data where id matches, but retaining rows where id does not match and keeping the data column as-is:
id | data
---------------------------------------
42 | {'a_list':['foo','bar'],'count':3} <-- where 'bar' is added to 'foo', and count is summed
43 | {'a_list':['scrog'],'count':1}
44 | {'a_list':['baz'],'count':4}
As can be seen where id is 42, there is a some logic I will have to apply to how the JSON is merged.
My knee jerk thought is that I'd like to provide a lambda / udf to merge the data column, but not sure how to think about that with during a join.
Alternatively, I could break the properties from the JSON into columns, something like this, that might be a better approach?
df1:
id | a_list | count
----------------------
42 | ['foo'] | 1
43 | ['scrog'] | 0
df2:
id | a_list | count
---------------------
42 | ['bar'] | 2
44 | ['baz'] | 4
Resulting:
id | a_list | count
---------------------------
42 | ['foo', 'bar'] | 3
43 | ['scrog'] | 0
44 | ['baz'] | 4
If I went this route, I would then have to merge the columns a_list and count into JSON again under a single column data, but this I can wrap my head around as a relatively simple map function.
Update: Expanding on Question
More realistically, I will have n number of DataFrames in a list, e.g. df_list = [df1, df2, df3], all shaped the same. What is an efficient way to perform these same actions on n number of DataFrames?
Update to Update
Not sure how efficient this is, or if there is a more spark-esque way to do this, but incorporating accepted answer, this appears to work for question update:
for i in range(0, (len(validations) - 1)):
# set dfs
df1 = validations[i]['df']
df2 = validations[(i+1)]['df']
# joins here...
# update new_df
new_df = df2

Answer 1

Here's one way to accomplish your second approach:
Explode the list column and then unionAll the two DataFrames. Next groupBy the "id" column and use pyspark.sql.functions.collect_list() and pyspark.sql.functions.sum():
import pyspark.sql.functions as f
new_df = df1.select("id", f.explode("a_list").alias("a_values"), "count")\
.unionAll(df2.select("id", f.explode("a_list").alias("a_values"), "count"))\
.groupBy("id")\
.agg(f.collect_list("a_values").alias("a_list"), f.sum("count").alias("count"))
new_df.show(truncate=False)
#+---+----------+-----+
#|id |a_list |count|
#+---+----------+-----+
#|43 |[scrog] |0 |
#|44 |[baz] |4 |
#|42 |[foo, bar]|3 |
#+---+----------+-----+
Finally you can use pyspark.sql.functions.struct() and pyspark.sql.functions.to_json() to convert this intermediate DataFrame into your desired structure:
new_df = new_df.select("id", f.to_json(f.struct("a_list", "count")).alias("data"))
new_df.show()
#+---+----------------------------------+
#|id |data |
#+---+----------------------------------+
#|43 |{"a_list":["scrog"],"count":0} |
#|44 |{"a_list":["baz"],"count":4} |
#|42 |{"a_list":["foo","bar"],"count":3}|
#+---+----------------------------------+
Update
If you had a list of dataframes in df_list, you could do the following:
from functools import reduce # for python3
df_list = [df1, df2]
new_df = reduce(lambda a, b: a.unionAll(b), df_list)\
.select("id", f.explode("a_list").alias("a_values"), "count")\
.groupBy("id")\
.agg(f.collect_list("a_values").alias("a_list"), f.sum("count").alias("count"))\
.select("id", f.to_json(f.struct("a_list", "count")).alias("data"))