Hello all -
I understand that support for union datatypes isn't complete, so I am
attempting to write a generic UDF to extract type-specific
information. For the example in the wiki
(https://cwiki.apache.org/Hive/languagemanual-types.html#LanguageManualTypes-Uniontypes):
CREATE TABLE union_test(foo UNIONTYPE<int, double, array<string>,
struct<a:int,b:string>>);
SELECT foo FROM union_test;
{0:1}
{1:2.0}
{2:["three","four"]}
{3:{"a":5,"b":"five"}}
{2:["six","seven"]}
{3:{"a":8,"b":"eight"}}
{0:9}
{1:10.0}
the udf would function as
SELECT union_extract(foo, 2) FROM union_test;
null
null
["three","four"]
null
["six","seven"]
null
null
where the return value is of the type matching the union definition
(in this case, array<string>)
>From my understanding, the initialize function of a GenericUDF
public ObjectInspector initialize(ObjectInspector[] arguments)
returns an ObjectInspector appropriate for the return value. Is it
possible to deduce from the arguments what type of ObjectInspector
should be returned?
Apologies if this is a basic question - I've written simple UDFs
before, butI didn't find any similar examples in the Hive codebase.
cheers,
-James
