JSON

ProphecySparkBasicsPython0.0.1+ProphecySparkBasicsScala0.0.1+Databricks UC Single Cluster14.3+Databricks UC Shared14.3+Livy3.0.1+

The JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) file type:

• Is human-readable, which simplifies how you debug and interact with data.
• Has a flexible schema, which makes it easy to add or modify fields without changing the file format.

Parameters

Parameter	Tab	Description
Location	Location	File path to read from or write to the JSON file.
Schema	Properties	Schema to apply on the loaded data. In the Source gem, you can define or edit the schema visually or in JSON code. In the Target gem, you can view the schema visually or as JSON code.

Source

The Source gem reads data from JSON files and allows you to optionally specify the following additional properties.

Source properties

Property name	Description	Default
Description	Description of your dataset.	None
Use user-defined schema	Whether to use the schema you define.	true
Parse Multi-line records	Whether to parse one record, which may span multiple lines, per file. You must enable this if your JSON file is more than one line long. JSON built-in functions ignore this option.	false
New line separator	Sets a separator for each line. The separator can be one or more characters. JSON built-in functions ignore this option.	\r, \r\n and \n
Infer primitive values as string type	Whether to infer all primitive values as a String type.	false
Infer floating-point values as decimal or double type	Whether to infer all floating-point values as a Decimal type. If the value does not fit in Decimal, then the Source gem infers them as a Double.	false
Ignore Java/C++ style comment in Json records	Whether to ignore Java and C++ style comments in JSON records.	false
Allow unquoted field names	Whether to allow unquoted JSON field names.	false
Allow single quotes	Whether to allow single quotes in addition to double quotes.	true
Allow leading zero in numbers	Whether to allow leading zeros in numbers.	false
Allow Backslash escaping	Whether to accept quotes on all characters using the backslash quoting mechanism.	false
Allow unquoted control characters in JSON string	Whether to allow unquoted control characters.	false
Mode to deal with corrupt records	How to handle corrupt data. For a list of the possible values, see Supported corrupt record modes.	PERMISSIVE
Column name of a corrupt record	Name of the column to create for corrupt records.	_corrupt_records
Date Format String	Sets the string that indicates a date format.	yyyy-MM-dd
Timestamp Format String	Sets the string that indicates a timestamp format.	yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss[.SSS][XXX]
Sampling ratio for schema inferring	Defines a fraction of rows to use for schema inferring. CSV built-in functions ignore this option.	1.0
Ignore column with all null values during schema inferring	Whether to ignore column of all null values or empty arrays during schema inference.	false
Recursive File Lookup	Whether to recursively load files and disable partition inferring. If the data source explicitly specifies the partitionSpec when therecursiveFileLookup is true, the Source gem throws an exception.	false

Supported corrupt record modes

Mode	Description
PERMISSIVE	Put the malformed string into the corrupt records column, and set the malformed fields to null.
DROPMALFORMED	Ignore the entire corrupted record. This mode is not supported in the CSV built-in functions.
FAILFAST	Throw an exception when it meets a corrupted record.

Example

Compiled code

tip

To see the compiled code of your project, switch to the Code view in the project header.

Python

def ReadDelta(spark: SparkSession) -> DataFrame:
    return spark.read.format("json").load("dbfs:/FileStore/data/example.json")

Scala

object ReadJson {

    def apply(spark: SparkSession): DataFrame =
        spark.read
            .format("json")
            .load("dbfs:/FileStore/data/example.json")

}

---

Target

The Target gem writes data to JSON files and allows you to optionally specify the following additional properties.

Target properties

Property name	Description	Default
Description	Description of your dataset.	None
Line Separator	Defines the line separator to use for parsing.	\n
Write Mode	How to handle existing data. For a list of the possible values, see Supported write modes.	error
Partition Columns	List of columns to partition the JSON file by.	None
Compression Codec	Compression codec when writing to the JSON file. The JSON file supports the following codecs: bzip2, gzip, lz4, snappy, and deflate. JSON built-in functions ignore this option.	None
Date Format String	String that indicates a date format.	yyyy-MM-dd
Timestamp Format String	String that indicates a timestamp format.	yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss[.SSS][XXX]
Encoding	Specifies to encode (charset) saved json files. JSON built-in functions ignore this option.	UTF-8
Ignore null fields	Whether to ignore null fields when generating JSON objects.	false

Supported write modes

Write mode	Description
error	If the data already exists, throw an exception.
overwrite	If the data already exists, overwrite the data with the contents of the DataFrame.
append	If the data already exists, append the contents of the DataFrame.
ignore	If the data already exists, do nothing with the contents of the DataFrame. This is similar to the CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS clause in SQL.

Example

Compiled code

tip

To see the compiled code of your project, switch to the Code view in the project header.

Python

def write_json(spark: SparkSession, in0: DataFrame):
    in0.write\
        .format("json")\
        .mode("overwrite")\
        .save("dbfs:/data/test_output.json")

Scala

object write_json {
  def apply(spark: SparkSession, in: DataFrame): Unit =
    in.write
        .format("json")
        .mode("overwrite")
        .save("dbfs:/data/test_output.json")
}

Producing A Single Output File

caution

We do not recommended this for extremely large data sets because it may overwhelm the worker node writing the file.

Due to Spark's distributed nature, Prophecy writes output files as multiple separate partition files. If you want a single output file, such as reporting or exporting to an external system, use a Repartition gem in Coalesce mode with one output partition: