pyspark.sql.Column.cast

Column.cast(dataType: Union[pyspark.sql.types.DataType, str]) → pyspark.sql.column.Column[source]

Casts the column into type dataType.

New in version 1.3.0.

Changed in version 3.4.0: Supports Spark Connect.

Parameters
dataTypeDataType or str

a DataType or Python string literal with a DDL-formatted string to use when parsing the column to the same type.

Returns
Column

Column representing whether each element of Column is cast into new type.

Examples

>>> from pyspark.sql.types import StringType
>>> df = spark.createDataFrame(
...      [(2, "Alice"), (5, "Bob")], ["age", "name"])
>>> df.select(df.age.cast("string").alias('ages')).collect()
[Row(ages='2'), Row(ages='5')]
>>> df.select(df.age.cast(StringType()).alias('ages')).collect()
[Row(ages='2'), Row(ages='5')]