Skip to main content
PYSPARK โ€ข LESSON 222

Business Key Deduplication with dropDuplicates()

How can we deduplicate a dataset based only on specific business keys like customer_id and transaction_date?

Advancedโฑ 3 Minutesโญ 810 XP
๐Ÿค” THE QUESTION

How can we deduplicate a dataset based only on specific business keys like customer_id and transaction_date?

๐Ÿ’ก WHAT IS IT?

dropDuplicates(subset=[...]) retains the first encountered row for each unique combination of specified key columns.

๐ŸŽฏ WHAT IS IT USED FOR?

Enforcing unique primary key constraints when non-key metadata columns may have minor variations.

๐Ÿ’ป EXAMPLE
df_deduped = df.dropDuplicates(subset=["customer_id", "transaction_date"])

๐ŸŽฏ Mission Objectives

Practice typing production-grade PySpark code for Business Key Deduplication with dropDuplicates().

  • โœ“ dropDuplicates() with subset
  • โœ“ Primary key constraint enforcement
  • โœ“ Key-based deduplication