python - Spark Equivalent of IF Then ELSE

Question

I have seen this question earlier here and I have took lessons from that. However I am not sure why I am getting an error when I feel it should work.

I want to create a new column in existing Spark DataFrame by some rules. Here is what I wrote. iris_spark is the data frame with a categorical variable iris_spark with three distinct categories.

from pyspark.sql import functions as F

iris_spark_df = iris_spark.withColumn(
    "Class", 
   F.when(iris_spark.iris_class == 'Iris-setosa', 0, F.when(iris_spark.iris_class == 'Iris-versicolor',1)).otherwise(2))

Throws the following error.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
TypeError                                 Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-157-21818c7dc060> in <module>()
----> 1 iris_spark_df=iris_spark.withColumn("Class",F.when(iris_spark.iris_class=='Iris-setosa',0,F.when(iris_spark.iris_class=='Iris-versicolor',1)))

TypeError: when() takes exactly 2 arguments (3 given)


---------------------------------------------------------------------------
TypeError                                 Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-157-21818c7dc060> in <module>()
----> 1 iris_spark_df=iris_spark.withColumn("Class",F.when(iris_spark.iris_class=='Iris-setosa',0,F.when(iris_spark.iris_class=='Iris-versicolor',1)))

TypeError: when() takes exactly 2 arguments (3 given)

Any idea why?

Answer 1

Correct structure is either:

(when(col("iris_class") == 'Iris-setosa', 0)
.when(col("iris_class") == 'Iris-versicolor', 1)
.otherwise(2))

which is equivalent to

CASE 
    WHEN (iris_class = 'Iris-setosa') THEN 0
    WHEN (iris_class = 'Iris-versicolor') THEN 1 
    ELSE 2
END

or:

(when(col("iris_class") == 'Iris-setosa', 0)
    .otherwise(when(col("iris_class") == 'Iris-versicolor', 1)
        .otherwise(2)))

which is equivalent to:

CASE WHEN (iris_class = 'Iris-setosa') THEN 0 
     ELSE CASE WHEN (iris_class = 'Iris-versicolor') THEN 1 
               ELSE 2 
          END 
END

with general syntax:

when(condition, value).when(...)

or

when(condition, value).otherwise(...)

You probably mixed up things with Hive IF conditional:

IF(condition, if-true, if-false)

which can be used only in raw SQL with Hive support.