Spark Sorting with JavaRDD<String>

Question

Let's say I have a file with line of strings and I import it to a JavaRDD, if I am trying to sort the strings and export as a new file, how should I do it? The code below is my attempt and it is not working

JavaSparkContext sparkContext = new JavaSparkContext("local[*]", "Spark Sort");
Configuration hadoopConfig = sparkContext.hadoopConfiguration();
hadoopConfig.set("fs.hdfs.imp", DistributedFileSystem.class.getName());
hadoopConfig.set("fs.file.impl", LocalFileSystem.class.getName());
JavaRDD<String> lines = sparkContext.textFile(args[0]);
JavaRDD<String> sorted = lines.sortBy(i->i, true,1);
sorted.saveAsTextFile(args[1]);

What I mean by "not working" is that the output file is not sorted. I think the issue is with my "i->i" code, I am not sure how to make it sort with the compare method of strings as each "i" will be a string (also not sure how to make it compare between different "i"

EDIT I have modified the code as per the comments, I suspect the file was being read as 1 giant string.

JavaSparkContext sparkContext = new JavaSparkContext("local[*]", "Spark Sort");
Configuration hadoopConfig = sparkContext.hadoopConfiguration();
hadoopConfig.set("fs.hdfs.imp", DistributedFileSystem.class.getName());
hadoopConfig.set("fs.file.impl", LocalFileSystem.class.getName());
long start  = System.currentTimeMillis();

List<String> array = buildArrayList(args[0]);
JavaRDD<String> lines = sparkContext.parallelize(array);
JavaRDD<String> sorted = lines.sortBy(i->i, true, 1);
sorted.saveAsTextFile(args[1]);

Still not sorting it :(

Answer 1

I made a little research. Your code is correct. Here are the samples which I tested:

Spark initizalization

SparkSession spark = SparkSession.builder().appName("test")
        .config("spark.debug.maxToStringFields", 10000)
        .config("spark.sql.tungsten.enabled", true)
        .enableHiveSupport().getOrCreate();

JavaSparkContext jSpark = new JavaSparkContext(spark.sparkContext());

Example for RDD

//RDD
JavaRDD rdd = jSpark.parallelize(Arrays.asList("z", "b", "c", "a"));
JavaRDD sorted = rdd.sortBy(i -> i, true, 1);
List<String> result = sorted.collect();
result.stream().forEach(i -> System.out.println(i));

The output is

a
b
c
z

You also can use dataset API //Dataset

Dataset<String> stringDataset = spark.createDataset(Arrays.asList("z", "b", "c", "a"), Encoders.STRING());
Dataset<String> sortedDataset = stringDataset.sort(stringDataset.col(stringDataset.columns()[0]).desc()); //by defualt is ascending order
result = sortedDataset.collectAsList();
result.stream().forEach(i -> System.out.println(i));

The output is

z
c
b
a

Your problem I think is that your text file have a specific lines separator. If it's so - you can use flatMap function to split your giant text string into line strings. Here the example with Dataset //flatMap example

Dataset<String> singleLineDS= spark.createDataset(Arrays.asList("z:%b:%c:%a"),  Encoders.STRING());
Dataset<String> splitedDS = singleLineDS.flatMap(i->Arrays.asList(i.split(":%")).iterator(),Encoders.STRING());
Dataset<String> sortedSplitedDs = splitedDS.sort(splitedDS.col(splitedDS.columns()[0]).desc());
result = sortedSplitedDs.collectAsList();
result.stream().forEach(i -> System.out.println(i));

So you should find which separator is in your text file and adopt the code above for your task