Possibly instead of doing the initial grouping, just do a full outer join on zyzy. This is in scala but should be easily convertible to python.
val data = Array(("john", "red"), ("john", "blue"), ("john", "red"), ("bill", "blue"), ("bill", "red"), ("sam", "green")) val distData: DataFrame = spark.sparkContext.parallelize(data).toDF("a", "b") distData.show() +----+-----+ | a| b| +----+-----+ |john| red| |john| blue| |john| red| |bill| blue| |bill| red| | sam|green| +----+-----+ distData.as("tbl1").join(distData.as("tbl2"), Seq("a"), "fullouter").select("tbl1.b", "tbl2.b").distinct.show() +-----+-----+ | b| b| +-----+-----+ | blue| red| | red| blue| | red| red| | blue| blue| |green|green| +-----+-----+ From: Andy Davidson <a...@santacruzintegration.com> Date: Friday, March 30, 2018 at 8:58 PM To: Andy Davidson <a...@santacruzintegration.com>, user <user@spark.apache.org> Subject: Re: how to create all possible combinations from an array? how to join and explode row array? I was a little sloppy when I created the sample output. Its missing a few pairs Assume for a given row I have [a, b, c] I want to create something like the cartesian join From: Andrew Davidson <a...@santacruzintegration.com> Date: Friday, March 30, 2018 at 5:54 PM To: "user @spark" <user@spark.apache.org> Subject: how to create all possible combinations from an array? how to join and explode row array? I have a dataframe and execute df.groupBy(“xyzy”).agg( collect_list(“abc”) This produces a column of type array. Now for each row I want to create a multiple pairs/tuples from the array so that I can create a contingency table. Any idea how I can transform my data so that call crosstab() ? The join transformation operate on the entire dataframe. I need something at the row array level? Bellow is some sample python and describes what I would like my results to be? Kind regards Andy c1 = ["john", "bill", "sam"] c2 = [['red', 'blue', 'red'], ['blue', 'red'], ['green']] p = pd.DataFrame({"a":c1, "b":c2}) df = sqlContext.createDataFrame(p) df.printSchema() df.show() root |-- a: string (nullable = true) |-- b: array (nullable = true) | |-- element: string (containsNull = true) +----+----------------+ | a| b| +----+----------------+ |john|[red, blue, red]| |bill | [blue, red]| | sam| [green]| +----+----------------+ The output I am trying to create is. I could live with a crossJoin (cartesian join) and add my own filtering if it makes the problem easier? +----+----------------+ | x1| x2| +----+----------------+ red | blue red | red blue | red +----+----------------+