Pig Latin: Load multiple files from a date range (part of the directory structure)

Question

I have the following scenario-

Pig version used 0.70

Sample HDFS directory structure:

/user/training/test/20100810/<data files>
/user/training/test/20100811/<data files>
/user/training/test/20100812/<data files>
/user/training/test/20100813/<data files>
/user/training/test/20100814/<data files>

As you can see in the paths listed above, one of the directory names is a date stamp.

Problem: I want to load files from a date range say from 20100810 to 20100813.

I can pass the 'from' and 'to' of the date range as parameters to the Pig script but how do I make use of these parameters in the LOAD statement. I am able to do the following

temp = LOAD '/user/training/test/{20100810,20100811,20100812}' USING SomeLoader() AS (...);

The following works with hadoop:

hadoop fs -ls /user/training/test/{20100810..20100813}

But it fails when I try the same with LOAD inside the pig script. How do I make use of the parameters passed to the Pig script to load data from a date range?

Error log follows:

Backend error message during job submission
-------------------------------------------
org.apache.pig.backend.executionengine.ExecException: ERROR 2118: Unable to create input splits for: hdfs://<ServerName>.com/user/training/test/{20100810..20100813}
        at org.apache.pig.backend.hadoop.executionengine.mapReduceLayer.PigInputFormat.getSplits(PigInputFormat.java:269)
        at org.apache.hadoop.mapred.JobClient.writeNewSplits(JobClient.java:858)
        at org.apache.hadoop.mapred.JobClient.writeSplits(JobClient.java:875)
        at org.apache.hadoop.mapred.JobClient.access$500(JobClient.java:170)
        at org.apache.hadoop.mapred.JobClient$2.run(JobClient.java:793)
        at org.apache.hadoop.mapred.JobClient$2.run(JobClient.java:752)
        at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
        at javax.security.auth.Subject.doAs(Subject.java:396)
        at org.apache.hadoop.security.UserGroupInformation.doAs(UserGroupInformation.java:1062)
        at org.apache.hadoop.mapred.JobClient.submitJobInternal(JobClient.java:752)
        at org.apache.hadoop.mapred.JobClient.submitJob(JobClient.java:726)
        at org.apache.hadoop.mapred.jobcontrol.Job.submit(Job.java:378)
        at org.apache.hadoop.mapred.jobcontrol.JobControl.startReadyJobs(JobControl.java:247)
        at org.apache.hadoop.mapred.jobcontrol.JobControl.run(JobControl.java:279)
        at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:619)
Caused by: org.apache.hadoop.mapreduce.lib.input.InvalidInputException: Input Pattern hdfs://<ServerName>.com/user/training/test/{20100810..20100813} matches 0 files
        at org.apache.hadoop.mapreduce.lib.input.FileInputFormat.listStatus(FileInputFormat.java:231)
        at org.apache.pig.backend.hadoop.executionengine.mapReduceLayer.PigTextInputFormat.listStatus(PigTextInputFormat.java:36)
        at org.apache.hadoop.mapreduce.lib.input.FileInputFormat.getSplits(FileInputFormat.java:248)
        at org.apache.pig.backend.hadoop.executionengine.mapReduceLayer.PigInputFormat.getSplits(PigInputFormat.java:258)
        ... 14 more



Pig Stack Trace
---------------
ERROR 2997: Unable to recreate exception from backend error: org.apache.pig.backend.executionengine.ExecException: ERROR 2118: Unable to create input splits for: hdfs://<ServerName>.com/user/training/test/{20100810..20100813}

org.apache.pig.impl.logicalLayer.FrontendException: ERROR 1066: Unable to open iterator for alias test
        at org.apache.pig.PigServer.openIterator(PigServer.java:521)
        at org.apache.pig.tools.grunt.GruntParser.processDump(GruntParser.java:544)
        at org.apache.pig.tools.pigscript.parser.PigScriptParser.parse(PigScriptParser.java:241)
        at org.apache.pig.tools.grunt.GruntParser.parseStopOnError(GruntParser.java:162)
        at org.apache.pig.tools.grunt.GruntParser.parseStopOnError(GruntParser.java:138)
        at org.apache.pig.tools.grunt.Grunt.run(Grunt.java:75)
        at org.apache.pig.Main.main(Main.java:357)
Caused by: org.apache.pig.backend.executionengine.ExecException: ERROR 2997: Unable to recreate exception from backend error: org.apache.pig.backend.executionengine.ExecException: ERROR 2118: Unable to create input splits for: hdfs://<ServerName>.com/user/training/test/{20100810..20100813}
        at org.apache.pig.backend.hadoop.executionengine.mapReduceLayer.Launcher.getStats(Launcher.java:169)

Do I need to make use of a higher language like Python to capture all date stamps in the range and pass them to LOAD as a comma separated list?

cheers

Answer 1

As zjffdu said, the path expansion is done by the shell. One common way to solve your problem is to simply use Pig parameters (which is a good way to make your script more resuable anyway):

shell:

pig -f script.pig -param input=/user/training/test/{20100810..20100812}

script.pig:

temp = LOAD '$input' USING SomeLoader() AS (...);