A column family is supposed to receive (some) writes. Maybe you can give us more context on why the check for column family is needed.
Do you try to alter table (and adding column family) when a particular column family doesn't exist ? Cheers On Fri, Dec 4, 2015 at 7:51 AM, Mehdi Ben Haj Abbes <[email protected]> wrote: > Thanks Ted for your answer. > > This what I'm doing : catching the exception, but before I'm setting > hbase.client.retries.number to 3 rather than the default value of 35 > otherwise my job will hang for few minutes. > > Is there no other way to make the check. > > Best regards, > > On Fri, Dec 4, 2015 at 4:35 PM, Ted Yu <[email protected]> wrote: > > > hasFamily() just checks the in-memory Map: > > > > public boolean hasFamily(final byte [] familyName) { > > > > return families.containsKey(familyName); > > > > bq. try to create it I will have an exception stating that the CF is > > already existing. > > > > In this case you can catch the exception and proceed, right ? > > > > Cheers > > > > On Fri, Dec 4, 2015 at 2:09 AM, Mehdi Ben Haj Abbes < > [email protected] > > > > > wrote: > > > > > Hi folks, > > > > > > I'm new to HBase client java API and using 0.98.4-hadoop2 version. > > > > > > I need to check if a column family does exit even if it does not have > any > > > rows in it. > > > The problem is that HTableDescriptor.hasFamily returns false for an > empty > > > column family so if I try to create it I will have an exception stating > > > that the CF is already existing. > > > > > > Any help will be more than appreciated. > > > > > > Regard, > > > > > > > > > -- > > > Mehdi BEN HAJ ABBES > > > > > > > > > -- > Mehdi BEN HAJ ABBES >
