about Delete and Put in TableOutputFormat

[Zhenyu Zhong]

I tried to use Put to update a record for the same rowkey and the same
version. However, I found that it resulted in multiple values in the same
version.


For example:  I can use hbase shell to fetch the values in the same
timestamp(version)
row    ts    value
row_a 20100101  10
row_a 20100101   11
row_a 20100101   12


Now I tried to override the TableOutputFormat class such that in the
function, basically I want to do a delete before put.

 public void write(KEY key, Writable value)

    throws IOException {

      if (value instanceof Put) {



       Put put = new Put((Put)value);

       // I tried to add the delete before put

       byte[] row = put.getRow();

       long ts = put.getTimeStamp();





       Delete delete = new Delete(row, ts, null);

       // add end

       this.table.delete(delete);

       this.table.put(new Put((Put)value));

      }

      else if (value instanceof Delete) this.table.delete(new
 Delete((Delete)value));

      else throw new IOException("Pass a Delete or a Put");

    }



However, after I rerun the data upload, I found that I couldn't use the
rowkey to fetch the record, but the strange thing is I can scan the table to
see all the rows.


May I ask what is a good way to do a delete before put for the same row key
and same timestamp?


thanks

zhenyu