Read Parquet file using Apache Beam Java SDK without providing schema

Question

It seems that the org.apache.beam.sdk.io.parquet.ParquetIO.readFiles method requires a schema to be passed in.

• Is there a way to avoid the need to pass in the schema?
• Isn't the schema included in the Parquet file?
• What if I am trying to read multiple Parquet files with different schema?

Answer 1

Please find my response inline

• Is there a way to avoid the need to pass in the schema? Currently there is no mechanism to avoid passing schema of the parquet files

• Isn't the schema included in the Parquet file? Yes that is correct, the metadata in the header as the schema definition of the file. Please refer to BEAM-8344 which is an Open Feature request to support infer schema

• What if I am trying to read multiple Parquet files with different schema? You can do something as below, wherein you can pass file patterns and paths and specify different schemas.

  PCollection<FileIO.ReadableFile> files = pipeline
    .apply(FileIO.match().filepattern(options.getInputFilepattern())
    .apply(FileIO.readMatches());

  PCollection<GenericRecord> output = files.apply(ParquetIO.readFiles(SCHEMA));