I have a pyspark dataframe with a column of numbers. I need to sum that column and then have the result return as an int in a python variable.

df = spark.createDataFrame([("A", 20), ("B", 30), ("D", 80)],["Letter", "Number"])

I do the following to sum the column.

df.groupBy().sum()

But I get a dataframe back.

+-----------+
|sum(Number)|
+-----------+
|        130|
+-----------+

I would 130 returned as an int stored in a variable to be used else where in the program.

result = 130

The simplest way really :

df.groupBy().sum().collect()

But it is very slow operation: Avoid groupByKey, you should use RDD and reduceByKey:

df.rdd.map(lambda x: (1,x[1])).reduceByKey(lambda x,y: x + y).collect()[0][1]

I tried on a bigger dataset and i measured the processing time:

RDD and ReduceByKey : 2.23 s

GroupByKey: 30.5 s