try_cast

Try to convert the column to a different data type. Returns null if conversion fails.

Added in Databricks Runtime 15.0

Syntax

try_cast(dataType)

Parameters

Parameter	Type	Description
dataType	DataType or str	Target data type

Returns

Column

Examples

Example 1: Cast with a DataType.

from pyspark.sql.types import LongType
df = spark.createDataFrame(
     [(2, "123"), (5, "Bob"), (3, None)], ["age", "name"])
df.select(df.name.try_cast(LongType())).show()

# +----+
# |name|
# +----+
# | 123|
# |NULL|
# |NULL|
# +----+

Example 2: Cast with a DDL string.

df = spark.createDataFrame(
     [(2, "123"), (5, "Bob"), (3, None)], ["age", "name"])
df.select(df.name.try_cast("double")).show()

# +-----+
# | name|
# +-----+
# |123.0|
# | NULL|
# | NULL|
# +-----+