Fix Python – Sort in descending order in PySpark

Question 1

I’m using PySpark (Python 2.7.9/Spark 1.3.1) and have a dataframe GroupObject which I need to filter & sort in the descending order. Trying to achieve it via this piece of code.

group_by_dataframe.count().filter("`count` >= 10").sort('count', ascending=False)

But it throws the following error.

sort() got an unexpected keyword argument 'ascending'

Question 2

In PySpark 1.3 sort method doesn’t take ascending parameter. You can use desc method instead:

from pyspark.sql.functions import col

(group_by_dataframe
    .count()
    .filter("`count` >= 10")
    .sort(col("count").desc()))

or desc function:

from pyspark.sql.functions import desc

(group_by_dataframe
    .count()
    .filter("`count` >= 10")
    .sort(desc("count"))

Both methods can be used with with Spark >= 1.3 (including Spark 2.x).

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