cast

Convert the column to a different data type.

Syntax

cast(dataType)

Parameters

Parameter	Type	Description
dataType	DataType or str	Target data type

Returns

Column

Examples

Cast with a string type name:

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')]

Cast with a DataType instance:

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

# [Row(ages='2'), Row(ages='5')]