Truncate delta table in Databricks using python

Question

Delta table delete operation is given here for Python and SQL. Truncate using SQL is given here . But cannot find a documentation for Python truncate table. How to do it for delta table in Databricks?

Answer 1

Not everything is exposed as a function for Python or Java/Scala. Some operations are SQL-only, like OPTIMIZE for example. If you want to truncate table, you have two choices:

1. Use

spark.sql("TRUNCATE TABLE <name>")

or

spark.sql("TRUNCATE TABLE delta.`<path>`")

2. Emulate truncate with read + write empty dataframe in overwrite mode:

df = spark.read.format("delta").load("<path>")
df.limit(0).write.mode("overwrite").format("delta").save("<path>")

Answer 2

query = "TRUNCATE TABLE <name>"

sqlContext.sql(query)