How to create correct data frame for classification in Spark ML

Question

I am trying to run random forest classification by using Spark ML api but I am having issues with creating right data frame input into pipeline.

Here is sample data:

age,hours_per_week,education,sex,salaryRange
38,40,"hs-grad","male","A"
28,40,"bachelors","female","A"
52,45,"hs-grad","male","B"
31,50,"masters","female","B"
42,40,"bachelors","male","B"

age and hours_per_week are integers while other features including label salaryRange are categorical (String)

Loading this csv file (lets call it sample.csv) can be done by Spark csv library like this:

val data = sqlContext.csvFile("/home/dusan/sample.csv")

By default all columns are imported as string so we need to change "age" and "hours_per_week" to Int:

val toInt    = udf[Int, String]( _.toInt)
val dataFixed = data.withColumn("age", toInt(data("age"))).withColumn("hours_per_week",toInt(data("hours_per_week")))

Just to check how schema looks now:

scala> dataFixed.printSchema
root
 |-- age: integer (nullable = true)
 |-- hours_per_week: integer (nullable = true)
 |-- education: string (nullable = true)
 |-- sex: string (nullable = true)
 |-- salaryRange: string (nullable = true)

Then lets set the cross validator and pipeline:

val rf = new RandomForestClassifier()
val pipeline = new Pipeline().setStages(Array(rf)) 
val cv = new CrossValidator().setNumFolds(10).setEstimator(pipeline).setEvaluator(new BinaryClassificationEvaluator)

Error shows up when running this line:

val cmModel = cv.fit(dataFixed)

java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Field "features" does not exist.

It is possible to set label column and feature column in RandomForestClassifier ,however I have 4 columns as predictors (features) not only one.

How I should organize my data frame so it has label and features columns organized correctly?

For your convenience here is full code :

import org.apache.spark.SparkConf
import org.apache.spark.SparkContext
import org.apache.spark.ml.classification.RandomForestClassifier
import org.apache.spark.ml.evaluation.BinaryClassificationEvaluator
import org.apache.spark.ml.tuning.CrossValidator
import org.apache.spark.ml.Pipeline
import org.apache.spark.sql.DataFrame

import org.apache.spark.sql.functions._
import org.apache.spark.mllib.linalg.{Vector, Vectors}


object SampleClassification {

  def main(args: Array[String]): Unit = {

    //set spark context
    val conf = new SparkConf().setAppName("Simple Application").setMaster("local");
    val sc = new SparkContext(conf)
    val sqlContext = new org.apache.spark.sql.SQLContext(sc)

    import sqlContext.implicits._
    import com.databricks.spark.csv._

    //load data by using databricks "Spark CSV Library" 
    val data = sqlContext.csvFile("/home/dusan/sample.csv")

    //by default all columns are imported as string so we need to change "age" and  "hours_per_week" to Int
    val toInt    = udf[Int, String]( _.toInt)
    val dataFixed = data.withColumn("age", toInt(data("age"))).withColumn("hours_per_week",toInt(data("hours_per_week")))


    val rf = new RandomForestClassifier()

    val pipeline = new Pipeline().setStages(Array(rf))

    val cv = new CrossValidator().setNumFolds(10).setEstimator(pipeline).setEvaluator(new BinaryClassificationEvaluator)

    // this fails with error
    //java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Field "features" does not exist.
    val cmModel = cv.fit(dataFixed) 
  }

}

Thanks for help!

Answer 1

As of Spark 1.4, you can use Transformer org.apache.spark.ml.feature.VectorAssembler. Just provide column names you want to be features.

val assembler = new VectorAssembler()
  .setInputCols(Array("col1", "col2", "col3"))
  .setOutputCol("features")

and add it to your pipeline.