String to Date migration from Spark 2.0 to 3.0 gives Fail to recognize 'EEE MMM dd HH:mm:ss zzz yyyy' pattern in the DateTimeFormatter

Question

I have a date string from a source in the format 'Fri May 24 00:00:00 BST 2019' that I would convert to a date and store in my dataframe as '2019-05-24' using code like my example which works for me under spark 2.0

from pyspark.sql.functions import to_date, unix_timestamp, from_unixtime
df = spark.createDataFrame([("Fri May 24 00:00:00 BST 2019",)], ['date_str'])
df2 = df.select('date_str', to_date(from_unixtime(unix_timestamp('date_str', 'EEE MMM dd HH:mm:ss zzz yyyy'))).alias('date'))
df2.show(1, False)

In my sandbox environment I've updated to spark 3.0 and now get the following error for the above code, is there a new method of doing this in 3.0 to convert my string to a date

: org.apache.spark.SparkUpgradeException: You may get a different result due to the upgrading of Spark 3.0: Fail to recognize 'EEE MMM dd HH:mm:ss zzz yyyy' pattern in the DateTimeFormatter.

1. You can set spark.sql.legacy.timeParserPolicy to LEGACY to restore the behavior before Spark 3.0.
2. You can form a valid datetime pattern with the guide from https://spark.apache.org/docs/latest/sql-ref-datetime-pattern.html

Answer 1

If you want to use the legacy format in a newer version of spark(>3), you need to set spark.conf.set("spark.sql.legacy.timeParserPolicy","LEGACY") or spark.sql("set spark.sql.legacy.timeParserPolicy=LEGACY"), which will resolve the issue.

Answer 2

Thanks for responses, excellent advice, for the moment I'll be going with the LEGACY setting. I have a workaround with Spark 3.0 by substringing out the EEE element but I've noticed a bug with how BST timezone converts incorrectly offseting by 10 hours while under LEGACY it correctly remains the same as I'm currently in BST zone. I can do something with this but will wait till the clocks change in the autumn to confirm.

spark.sql("set spark.sql.legacy.timeParserPolicy=LEGACY")
df = spark.createDataFrame([('Fri May 24 00:00:00 BST 2019',)], ['mydate'])
df = df.select('mydate',
                to_timestamp(df.mydate.substr(5, 28), 'MMM dd HH:mm:ss zzz yyyy').alias('datetime'),
                to_timestamp(df.mydate, 'EEE MMM dd HH:mm:ss zzz yyyy').alias('LEGACYdatetime')
               ).show(1, False)

df = spark.createDataFrame([('Fri May 24 00:00:00 GMT 2019',)], ['mydate'])
df = df.select('mydate', 
                to_timestamp(df.mydate.substr(5, 28), 'MMM dd HH:mm:ss zzz yyyy').alias('datetime'),
                to_timestamp(df.mydate, 'EEE MMM dd HH:mm:ss zzz yyyy').alias('LEGACYdatetime')
               ).show(1, False)

spark.sql("set spark.sql.legacy.timeParserPolicy=CORRECTED")
df = spark.createDataFrame([('Fri May 24 00:00:00 BST 2019',)], ['mydate'])
df = df.select('mydate', 
                to_timestamp(df.mydate.substr(5, 28), 'MMM dd HH:mm:ss zzz yyyy').alias('datetime')          
               ).show(1, False)

df = spark.createDataFrame([('Fri May 24 00:00:00 GMT 2019',)], ['mydate'])
df = df.select('mydate', 
                to_timestamp(df.mydate.substr(5, 28), 'MMM dd HH:mm:ss zzz yyyy').alias('datetime')           
               ).show(1, False)

+----------------------------+-------------------+-------------------+
|mydate                      |datetime           |LEGACYdatetime     |
+----------------------------+-------------------+-------------------+
|Fri May 24 00:00:00 BST 2019|2019-05-24 00:00:00|2019-05-24 00:00:00|
+----------------------------+-------------------+-------------------+

+----------------------------+-------------------+-------------------+
|mydate                      |datetime           |LEGACYdatetime     |
+----------------------------+-------------------+-------------------+
|Fri May 24 00:00:00 GMT 2019|2019-05-24 01:00:00|2019-05-24 01:00:00|
+----------------------------+-------------------+-------------------+

+----------------------------+-------------------+
|mydate                      |datetime           |
+----------------------------+-------------------+
|Fri May 24 00:00:00 BST 2019|2019-05-23 14:00:00|
+----------------------------+-------------------+

+----------------------------+-------------------+
|mydate                      |datetime           |
+----------------------------+-------------------+
|Fri May 24 00:00:00 GMT 2019|2019-05-24 01:00:00|
+----------------------------+-------------------+