persist
Sets the storage level to persist the contents of the DataFrame across operations after the first time it is computed. This can only be used to assign a new storage level if the DataFrame does not have a storage level set yet. If no storage level is specified defaults to (MEMORY_AND_DISK_DESER).
Syntax
persist(storageLevel: StorageLevel = StorageLevel.MEMORY_AND_DISK_DESER)
Parameters
Parameter | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| StorageLevel | Storage level to set for persistence. Default is MEMORY_AND_DISK_DESER. |
Returns
DataFrame: Persisted DataFrame.
Notes
The default storage level has changed to MEMORY_AND_DISK_DESER to match Scala in 3.0.
Cached data is shared across all Spark sessions on the cluster.
Examples
Databricks recommends moving away from DataFrame.persist() as it is not compatible with Databricks serverless compute architecture. Materialize intermediate results to a Delta table instead if reuse is expensive.
df = spark.range(1)
df.persist()
# DataFrame[id: bigint]
df.explain()
# == Physical Plan ==
# InMemoryTableScan ...
from pyspark.storagelevel import StorageLevel
df.persist(StorageLevel.DISK_ONLY)
# DataFrame[id: bigint]