Spark shell provides a simple way to perform interactive analysis of data. It also enables you to learn the Spark APIs by quickly trying out various APIs. In addition, the similarity to Scala shell and support for Scala APIs also lets you also adapt quickly to Scala language constructs and make better use of Spark APIs.
Spark shell implements the concept of read-evaluate-print-loop (REPL), which allows you to interact with the shell by typing in code which is evaluated. The result is then printed on the console, without needing to be compiled, so building executable code.
Start it by running the following in the directory where you installed Spark:
./bin/spark-shell
Spark shell launches and the Spark shell automatically creates the SparkSession and SparkContext objects. The SparkSession is available as a Spark and the SparkContext is available as sc.
spark-shell can be launched with several options as shown in the following snippet (the most important ones are in bold):
./bin/spark-shell --help
Usage: ./bin/spark-shell [options]
Options:
--master MASTER_URL spark://host:port, mesos://host:port, yarn, or local.
--deploy-mode DEPLOY_MODE Whether to launch the driver program locally ("client") or
on one of the worker machines inside the cluster ("cluster")
(Default: client).
--class CLASS_NAME Your application's main class (for Java / Scala apps).
--name NAME A name of your application.
--jars JARS Comma-separated list of local jars to include on the driver
and executor classpaths.
--packages Comma-separated list of maven coordinates of jars to include
on the driver and executor classpaths. Will search the local
maven repo, then maven central and any additional remote
repositories given by --repositories. The format for the
coordinates should be groupId:artifactId:version.
--exclude-packages Comma-separated list of groupId:artifactId, to exclude while
resolving the dependencies provided in --packages to avoid
dependency conflicts.
--repositories Comma-separated list of additional remote repositories to
search for the maven coordinates given with --packages.
--py-files PY_FILES Comma-separated list of .zip, .egg, or .py files to place
on the PYTHONPATH for Python apps.
--files FILES Comma-separated list of files to be placed in the working
directory of each executor.
--conf PROP=VALUE Arbitrary Spark configuration property.
--properties-file FILE Path to a file from which to load extra properties. If not
specified, this will look for conf/spark-defaults.conf.
--driver-memory MEM Memory for driver (e.g. 1000M, 2G) (Default: 1024M).
--driver-Java-options Extra Java options to pass to the driver.
--driver-library-path Extra library path entries to pass to the driver.
--driver-class-path Extra class path entries to pass to the driver. Note that
jars added with --jars are automatically included in the
classpath.
--executor-memory MEM Memory per executor (e.g. 1000M, 2G) (Default: 1G).
--proxy-user NAME User to impersonate when submitting the application.
This argument does not work with --principal / --keytab.
--help, -h Show this help message and exit.
--verbose, -v Print additional debug output.
--version, Print the version of current Spark.
Spark standalone with cluster deploy mode only:
--driver-cores NUM Cores for driver (Default: 1).
Spark standalone or Mesos with cluster deploy mode only:
--supervise If given, restarts the driver on failure.
--kill SUBMISSION_ID If given, kills the driver specified.
--status SUBMISSION_ID If given, requests the status of the driver specified.
Spark standalone and Mesos only:
--total-executor-cores NUM Total cores for all executors.
Spark standalone and YARN only:
--executor-cores NUM Number of cores per executor. (Default: 1 in YARN mode,
or all available cores on the worker in standalone mode)
YARN-only:
--driver-cores NUM Number of cores used by the driver, only in cluster mode
(Default: 1).
--queue QUEUE_NAME The YARN queue to submit to (Default: "default").
--num-executors NUM Number of executors to launch (Default: 2).
If dynamic allocation is enabled, the initial number of
executors will be at least NUM.
--archives ARCHIVES Comma separated list of archives to be extracted into the
working directory of each executor.
--principal PRINCIPAL Principal to be used to login to KDC, while running on
secure HDFS.
--keytab KEYTAB The full path to the file that contains the keytab for the
principal specified above. This keytab will be copied to
the node running the Application Master via the Secure
Distributed Cache, for renewing the login tickets and the
delegation tokens periodically.
You can also submit Spark code in the form of executable Java jars so that the job is executed in a cluster. Usually, you do this once you have reached a workable solution using the shell.
Use ./bin/spark-submit when submitting a Spark job to a cluster (local, YARN, and Mesos).
The following are Shell Commands (the most important ones are in bold):
scala> :help
All commands can be abbreviated, e.g., :he instead of :help.
:edit <id>|<line> edit history
:help [command] print this summary or command-specific help
:history [num] show the history (optional num is commands to show)
:h? <string> search the history
:imports [name name ...] show import history, identifying sources of names
:implicits [-v] show the implicits in scope
:javap <path|class> disassemble a file or class name
:line <id>|<line> place line(s) at the end of history
:load <path> interpret lines in a file
:paste [-raw] [path] enter paste mode or paste a file
:power enable power user mode
:quit exit the interpreter
:replay [options] reset the repl and replay all previous commands
:require <path> add a jar to the classpath
:reset [options] reset the repl to its initial state, forgetting all session entries
:save <path> save replayable session to a file
:sh <command line> run a shell command (result is implicitly => List[String])
:settings <options> update compiler options, if possible; see reset
:silent disable/enable automatic printing of results
:type [-v] <expr> display the type of an expression without evaluating it
:kind [-v] <expr> display the kind of expression's type
:warnings show the suppressed warnings from the most recent line which had any
Using the spark-shell, we will now load some data as an RDD:
scala> val rdd_one = sc.parallelize(Seq(1,2,3))
rdd_one: org.apache.spark.rdd.RDD[Int] = ParallelCollectionRDD[0] at parallelize at <console>:24
scala> rdd_one.take(10)
res0: Array[Int] = Array(1, 2, 3)
As you see, we are running the commands one by one. Alternately, we can also paste the commands:
scala> :paste
// Entering paste mode (ctrl-D to finish)
val rdd_one = sc.parallelize(Seq(1,2,3))
rdd_one.take(10)
// Exiting paste mode, now interpreting.
rdd_one: org.apache.spark.rdd.RDD[Int] = ParallelCollectionRDD[10] at parallelize at <console>:26
res10: Array[Int] = Array(1, 2, 3)
In the next section, we will go deeper into the operations.