Spark – Split array to separate column

Last Updated : 24 Apr, 2025

Apache Spark is a potent big data processing system that can analyze enormous amounts of data concurrently over distributed computer clusters. PySpark is a Python-based interface for Apache Spark. Python programmers may create Spark applications more quickly and easily thanks to PySpark.

Method 1: Using The Function Split()

In this example first, the required package “split” is imported from the “pyspark.sql.functions” module. Then, a SparkSession is created. Next, a PySpark DataFrame is created with two columns “id” and “fruits” and two rows with the values “1, apple, orange, banana” and “2, grape, kiwi, peach”. Using the “split” function, the “fruits” column is split into an array of strings and stored in a new column “fruit_list”. Then, a new DataFrame “df3” is created by selecting the first three elements of the “fruit_list” array using the “getItem” function and aliasing them as “fruit1”, “fruit2”, and “fruit3”. Finally, the “show” method is called on both DataFrames to display the output.

Syntax: split(str: Column, pattern: str) -> Column

The split method returns a new PySpark Column object that represents an array of strings. Each element in the array is a substring of the original column that was split using the specified pattern.

The split method takes two parameters:

str: The PySpark column to split. This can be a string column, a column expression, or a column name.
pattern: The string or regular expression to split the column on.

Python3

# importing packages
from pyspark.sql.functions import split
from pyspark.sql import SparkSession
 
# creating a spark session
spark = SparkSession.builder.appName('split_array_to_columns').getOrCreate()
 
# Create a PySpark DataFrame
df = spark.createDataFrame([(1, "apple,orange,banana"),
                            (2, "grape,kiwi,peach")], ["id", "fruits"])
 
# Split the "fruits" column into an array of strings
df = df.withColumn("fruit_list", split(df.fruits, ","))
 
# Show the resulting DataFrame
df.show()
 
df3 = df.select(
    df.fruit_list.getItem(0).alias('fruit1'),
    df.fruit_list.getItem(1).alias('fruit2'),
    df.fruit_list.getItem(2).alias('fruit3')
)
 
df3.show()

Output:

Output Image

Method 2: Using the function getItem()

In this example, first, let’s create a data frame that has two columns “id” and “fruits”. To split the fruits array column into separate columns, we use the PySpark getItem() function along with the col() function to create a new column for each fruit element in the array. The getItem() function is a PySpark SQL function that allows you to extract a single element from an array column in a DataFrame. It takes an integer index as a parameter and returns the element at that index in the array.

Syntax: getItem(index)
The index parameter specifies the index of the element to extract from the array column. The index can be an integer or a column expression that evaluates to an integer.

Python3

# importing packages
from pyspark.sql import SparkSession
from pyspark.sql.functions import array, col
 
# creating a spark session
spark = SparkSession.builder.appName('split_array_to_columns').getOrCreate()
 
 
data = [(1, ['apple', 'banana', 'orange']),
        (2, ['grape', 'kiwi', 'pineapple', 'watermelon']),
        (3, ['peach', 'pear'])]
# creating a dataframe
df = spark.createDataFrame(data, ['id', 'fruits'])
df.show()
 
# splitting the fruits column into multiple columns
df = df.select('id',
               *[col('fruits').getItem(i).alias(fruit{i+1}') for i in range(0, 4)])
df.printSchema()