Joins in PySpark DataFrames

Joins are one of the most common operations when working with data.
In PySpark, joins let you combine DataFrames based on matching keys — while taking advantage of Spark’s distributed computing engine.

This guide covers all join types in PySpark, including:

• Inner Join
• Left Join
• Right Join
• Full Outer Join
• Left Semi Join
• Left Anti Join
• Cross Join

Each join comes with a clean explanation, Python code, and output.

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Load Example Datasets

from pyspark.sql import SparkSession

spark = SparkSession.builder.appName('joins').getOrCreate()

# Authors dataset
authors = [(1, "John Smith"),
           (2, "Jane Doe"),
           (3, "Alex Lee"),
           (4, "Anna Ray")]

df_authors = spark.createDataFrame(authors, ["AuthorID", "Author"])

# Books dataset
books = [(1, "Deep Learning"),
         (2, "AI Ethics"),
         (5, "Data Science")]

df_books = spark.createDataFrame(books, ["AuthorID", "Book"])

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1. Inner Join

df_authors.join(df_books, on="AuthorID", how="inner").show()

📌 When to Use:

Use inner join when you only need rows that exist in both DataFrames.
Example: authors who actually wrote a book.

✅ Result

AuthorID	Author	Book
1	John Smith	Deep Learning
2	Jane Doe	AI Ethics

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2. Left Join (Left Outer Join)

df_authors.join(df_books, on="AuthorID", how="left").show()

📌 When to Use:

Use when you want all authors, even if they don’t have a book.

✅ Result

AuthorID	Author	Book
1	John Smith	Deep Learning
2	Jane Doe	AI Ethics
3	Alex Lee	null
4	Anna Ray	null

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3. Right Join (Right Outer Join)

df_authors.join(df_books, on="AuthorID", how="right").show()

📌 When to Use:

Use when you want all books, even if no author matches.

✅ Result

AuthorID	Author	Book
1	John Smith	Deep Learning
2	Jane Doe	AI Ethics
5	null	Data Science

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4. Full Outer Join

df_authors.join(df_books, on="AuthorID", how="outer").show()

📌 When to Use:

Use this join when you want all records from both sides, matched where possible.

✅ Result

AuthorID	Author	Book
1	John Smith	Deep Learning
2	Jane Doe	AI Ethics
3	Alex Lee	null
4	Anna Ray	null
5	null	Data Science

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5. Left Semi Join

df_authors.join(df_books, on="AuthorID", how="left_semi").show()

📌 When to Use:

Use left semi join when you only need rows from the left DataFrame that have a match in the right.

Note: You only get left columns — right DataFrame columns are removed.

Example:

Find authors who have written a book.

✅ Result

AuthorID	Author
1	John Smith
2	Jane Doe

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6. Left Anti Join

df_authors.join(df_books, on="AuthorID", how="left_anti").show()

📌 When to Use:

Use when you want rows from the left DataFrame that do NOT exist in the right.

Example:

Find authors without any published book.

✅ Result

AuthorID	Author
3	Alex Lee
4	Anna Ray

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7. Cross Join (Cartesian Product)

df_authors.crossJoin(df_books).show()

📌 When to Use:

Use only in special cases, such as generating combinations for recommendations or testing.

⚠️ Warning:
Cross join produces all combinations, which can explode to millions of rows.

Example Result (Truncated)

AuthorID	Author	AuthorID	Book
1	John Smith	1	Deep Learning
1	John Smith	2	AI Ethics
1	John Smith	5	Data Science
...	...	...	...

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🔑 1-Minute Summary — PySpark Joins

Join Type	What It Does
inner	Only matching rows from both sides
left	All left rows + matching right rows
right	All right rows + matching left rows
outer	Keep every row from both sides
left_semi	Left rows that have matches in right
left_anti	Left rows that don’t have matches in right
crossJoin()	All combinations (use carefully)

Next, we’ll explore Window Functions in PySpark DataFrames, enabling running totals, rankings, and time-based calculations.