PigFunctions

Writing your own Pig functions

Pig has a number of built-in functions for loading, filtering, aggregating, etc. (A complete list is available at PigBuiltins.) However, if you want to do something specialized you may need to write your own function. This page will walk you through how to do this.

Types of functions

The most important type and commonly used type of functions are EvalFunction. Eval functions consume a tuple, do some computation, and produce some data

Eval functions are very flexible, e.g. they can mimic "map" and "reduce" style functions:

• "Map" behavior: The output type of an Eval Function is one of: a single value, a tuple, or a bag of tuples (a Map/Reduce "map" function produces a bag of tuples).

• "Reduce" behavior: Recall that in the Pig data model, a tuple may contain fields of type bag. Hence an Eval Function may perform aggregation or "reducing" by iterating over a bag of tuples nested within the input tuple. This is how the built-in aggregation function SUM(...) works, for example.

The other types of functions are:

• Load Function: controls reading of tuples from files

• Store Function: controls storing of tuples to files

Example

The following example uses each of the types of functions. It computes the set of unique IP addresses associated with "good" products drawn from a list of products found on the web.

register myFunctions.jar
products = LOAD '/productlist.txt' USING MyListStorage() AS (name, price, description, url);
goodProducts = FILTER products BY (price <= '19.99');
hostnames = FOREACH goodProducts GENERATE MyHostExtractor(url) AS hostname;
uniqueIPs = FOREACH (GROUP hostnames BY MyIPLookup(hostname)) GENERATE group AS ipAddress;
STORE uniqueIPs INTO '/iplist.txt' USING MyListStorage();

In the above example, MyListStorage() serves as a load function as well as a store function; MyHostExtractor() and MyIPLookup() are eval functions. myFunctions.jar is a jar file that contains the classes for the user-defined functions.

How to write functions

Ready to write your own handy-dandy pig function? Before you start, you will need to know about the APIs for interacting with the data types (atom, tuple, bag). Click here: PigDataTypeApis.

Click below to learn how to build your own:

• EvalFunction

• Load/Store Function (These are the most difficult to write, and usually, the inbuilt ones should be enough)

Ok, I have written my function, how to use it?

You can use your functions following the steps below:

• Put all the compiled files used by your function together into a jar file

• Tell Pig about that jar by the register <udfJar> command before using the function. To register a UDF jar, you can either specify a full path to the jar file (register /home/myjars/udfs.jar) or you can place the jar file in your classpath and pig will find it there (register udfs.jar). (If you are using PigLatin in embedded mode, call PigServer.registerJar()).

• Then use your function, as you would use a builtin! Its that simple.

Example:

The following example describes how to use your Eval function. Follow the same procedure for your Load/Store function.

1. Create your function /src/myfunc/MyEvalFunc.java

package myfunc;

import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.StringTokenizer;
import com.yahoo.pig.EvalFunc;
import com.yahoo.pig.data.DataBag;
import com.yahoo.pig.data.Tuple;

public class MyEvalFunc extends EvalFunc<DataBag>
{
        //@Override
        public void exec(Tuple input, DataBag output) throws IOException
        {
                String str = input.getAtomField(0).strval();
                StringTokenizer tok = new StringTokenizer(str, " \",()*", false);
                while (tok.hasMoreTokens())
                {
                        output.add(new Tuple(tok.nextToken()));
                }
        }
}

2. Compile your function. Make sure to point java compiler to pig jar file.

/src/myfunc $ javac -classpath /src/pig.jar MyEvalFunc.java

3. Create jar file

/src/myfunc $ cd ..
/src $  jar cf myfunc.jar myfunc

4. Use the function through grunt (similar use from script). Note that there is no quotes around path in the register call.

/src $ java -jar pig.jar -
grunt> register /src/myfunc.jar
grunt> A = load 'students' using PigStorage('\t');
grunt> B = foreach A generate myfunc.MyEvalFunc($0);
grunt> dump B;
({(joe smith)})
({(john adams)})
({(anne white)})
....

See EmbeddedPig to see example of embeding Pig and your functions in Java. Use the same procedure outlined above to create your function jar file.

Advanced Features:

• If you would like your function class to be instantiated with a non-default constructor, you can use the define <alias> <funcSpec> command. (If you are using PigLatin in embedded mode, call PigServer.registerFunction()).

• E.g., if I want my class MyFunc to be instantiated wih the string 'foo', I can write define myFuncAlias myFunc('foo'). I can then use myFuncAlias as a normal user-defined function.

• Note that only string arguments to constructors are supported.