How to add a constant column in a Spark DataFrame?

As the other answers have described, lit and typedLit are how to add constant columns to DataFrames. lit is an important Spark function that you will use frequently, but not for adding constant columns to DataFrames.

You'll commonly be using lit to create org.apache.spark.sql.Column objects because that's the column type required by most of the org.apache.spark.sql.functions.

Suppose you have a DataFrame with a some_date DateType column and would like to add a column with the days between December 31, 2020 and some_date.

Here's your DataFrame:

+----------+
| some_date|
+----------+
|2020-09-23|
|2020-01-05|
|2020-04-12|
+----------+

Here's how to calculate the days till the year end:

val diff = datediff(lit(Date.valueOf("2020-12-31")), col("some_date"))
df
  .withColumn("days_till_yearend", diff)
  .show()

+----------+-----------------+
| some_date|days_till_yearend|
+----------+-----------------+
|2020-09-23|               99|
|2020-01-05|              361|
|2020-04-12|              263|
+----------+-----------------+

You could also use lit to create a year_end column and compute the days_till_yearend like so:

import java.sql.Date

df
  .withColumn("yearend", lit(Date.valueOf("2020-12-31")))
  .withColumn("days_till_yearend", datediff(col("yearend"), col("some_date")))
  .show()

+----------+----------+-----------------+
| some_date|   yearend|days_till_yearend|
+----------+----------+-----------------+
|2020-09-23|2020-12-31|               99|
|2020-01-05|2020-12-31|              361|
|2020-04-12|2020-12-31|              263|
+----------+----------+-----------------+

Most of the time, you don't need to use lit to append a constant column to a DataFrame. You just need to use lit to convert a Scala type to a org.apache.spark.sql.Column object because that's what's required by the function.

See the datediff function signature:

As you can see, datediff requires two Column arguments.

In spark 2.2 there are two ways to add constant value in a column in DataFrame:

1) Using lit

2) Using typedLit.

The difference between the two is that typedLit can also handle parameterized scala types e.g. List, Seq, and Map

Sample DataFrame:

val df = spark.createDataFrame(Seq((0,"a"),(1,"b"),(2,"c"))).toDF("id", "col1")

+---+----+
| id|col1|
+---+----+
|  0|   a|
|  1|   b|
+---+----+

1) Using lit: Adding constant string value in new column named newcol:

import org.apache.spark.sql.functions.lit
val newdf = df.withColumn("newcol",lit("myval"))

Result:

+---+----+------+
| id|col1|newcol|
+---+----+------+
|  0|   a| myval|
|  1|   b| myval|
+---+----+------+

2) Using typedLit:

import org.apache.spark.sql.functions.typedLit
df.withColumn("newcol", typedLit(("sample", 10, .044)))

Result:

+---+----+-----------------+
| id|col1|           newcol|
+---+----+-----------------+
|  0|   a|[sample,10,0.044]|
|  1|   b|[sample,10,0.044]|
|  2|   c|[sample,10,0.044]|
+---+----+-----------------+

Spark 2.2+

Spark 2.2 introduces typedLit to support Seq, Map, and Tuples (SPARK-19254) and following calls should be supported (Scala):

import org.apache.spark.sql.functions.typedLit

df.withColumn("some_array", typedLit(Seq(1, 2, 3)))
df.withColumn("some_struct", typedLit(("foo", 1, 0.3)))
df.withColumn("some_map", typedLit(Map("key1" -> 1, "key2" -> 2)))

Spark 1.3+ (lit), 1.4+ (array, struct), 2.0+ (map):

The second argument for DataFrame.withColumn should be a Column so you have to use a literal:

from pyspark.sql.functions import lit

df.withColumn('new_column', lit(10))

If you need complex columns you can build these using blocks like array:

from pyspark.sql.functions import array, create_map, struct

df.withColumn("some_array", array(lit(1), lit(2), lit(3)))
df.withColumn("some_struct", struct(lit("foo"), lit(1), lit(.3)))
df.withColumn("some_map", create_map(lit("key1"), lit(1), lit("key2"), lit(2)))

Exactly the same methods can be used in Scala.

import org.apache.spark.sql.functions.{array, lit, map, struct}

df.withColumn("new_column", lit(10))
df.withColumn("map", map(lit("key1"), lit(1), lit("key2"), lit(2)))

To provide names for structs use either alias on each field:

df.withColumn(
    "some_struct",
    struct(lit("foo").alias("x"), lit(1).alias("y"), lit(0.3).alias("z"))
 )

or cast on the whole object

df.withColumn(
    "some_struct", 
    struct(lit("foo"), lit(1), lit(0.3)).cast("struct<x: string, y: integer, z: double>")
 )

It is also possible, although slower, to use an UDF.

Note:

The same constructs can be used to pass constant arguments to UDFs or SQL functions.