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PYSPARK • LESSON 135

Temporal Fields with DateType and TimestampType

How do we model calendar business dates (DateType) versus microsecond audit timestamps (TimestampType)?

Advanced2 Minutes710 XP
🤔 THE QUESTION

How do we model calendar business dates (DateType) versus microsecond audit timestamps (TimestampType)?

💡 WHAT IS IT?

DateType stores calendar dates (YYYY-MM-DD); TimestampType stores microsecond-level datetime points.

🎯 WHAT IS IT USED FOR?

Audit trails, partition pruning keys, event time watermarks, and SLA measurement.

💻 EXAMPLE
from pyspark.sql.types import StructType, StructField, DateType, TimestampType

audit_schema = StructType([
    StructField("business_date", DateType(), False),
    StructField("created_timestamp", TimestampType(), False)
])

🎯 Mission Objectives

Practice typing production-grade PySpark code for Temporal Fields with DateType and TimestampType.

  • Import DateType and TimestampType
  • Model business dates and audit timestamps
  • Enforce temporal schema contract