How to Order PysPark DataFrame by Multiple Columns ?

In this article, we are going to order the multiple columns by using orderBy() functions in pyspark dataframe. Ordering the rows means arranging the rows in ascending or descending order, so we are going to create the dataframe using nested list and get the distinct data.

orderBy() function that sorts one or more columns. By default, it orders by ascending.

Syntax: orderBy(*cols, ascending=True)

Parameters:

• cols: Columns by which sorting is needed to be performed.
• ascending: Boolean value to say that sorting is to be done in ascending order

Example Program to create dataframe with student data as information:

Python3

# importing module
import pyspark

# importing sparksession from pyspark.sql module
from pyspark.sql import SparkSession

# creating sparksession and giving an app name
spark = SparkSession.builder.appName('sparkdf').getOrCreate()

# list  of students  data
data =[["1","sravan","vignan"],
       ["2","ojaswi","vvit"],
       ["3","rohith","vvit"],
       ["4","sridevi","vignan"],
       ["1","sravan","vignan"],
       ["5","gnanesh","iit"]]

# specify column names
columns=['student ID','student NAME','college']

# creating a dataframe from the lists of data
dataframe = spark.createDataFrame(data,columns)

print("Actual data in dataframe")

# show dataframe
dataframe.show()

Output:

Actual data in dataframe
+----------+------------+-------+
|student ID|student NAME|college|
+----------+------------+-------+
|         1|      sravan| vignan|
|         2|      ojaswi|   vvit|
|         3|      rohith|   vvit|
|         4|     sridevi| vignan|
|         1|      sravan| vignan|
|         5|     gnanesh|    iit|
+----------+------------+-------+

Example 1: Python program to show dataframe by sorting the dataframe based on two columns in descending order using orderby() function

Python3

# show dataframe by sorting the dataframe based
# on two columns in descending order using orderby() function
dataframe.orderBy(['student ID','student NAME'],
                  ascending=False).show()

Output:

+----------+------------+-------+
|student ID|student NAME|college|
+----------+------------+-------+
|         5|     gnanesh|    iit|
|         4|     sridevi| vignan|
|         3|      rohith|   vvit|
|         2|      ojaswi|   vvit|
|         1|      sravan| vignan|
|         1|      sravan| vignan|
+----------+------------+-------+

Example 2: Python program to show dataframe by sorting the dataframe based on two columns in ascending order using orderby() function

Python3

# show dataframe by sorting the dataframe
# based on two columns in ascending order
# using orderby() function
dataframe.orderBy(['student ID','student NAME'],
                  ascending=True).show()

Output:

+----------+------------+-------+
|student ID|student NAME|college|
+----------+------------+-------+
|         1|      sravan| vignan|
|         1|      sravan| vignan|
|         2|      ojaswi|   vvit|
|         3|      rohith|   vvit|
|         4|     sridevi| vignan|
|         5|     gnanesh|    iit|
+----------+------------+-------+