Specify initial state for mapGroupsWithState

You can specify a user defined initial state for Structured Streaming stateful processing using flatMapGroupsWithStateor mapGroupsWithState. This allows you to avoid reprocessing data when starting a stateful stream without a valid checkpoint.

def mapGroupsWithState[S: Encoder, U: Encoder](
    timeoutConf: GroupStateTimeout,
    initialState: KeyValueGroupedDataset[K, S])(
    func: (K, Iterator[V], GroupState[S]) => U): Dataset[U]

def flatMapGroupsWithState[S: Encoder, U: Encoder](
    outputMode: OutputMode,
    timeoutConf: GroupStateTimeout,
    initialState: KeyValueGroupedDataset[K, S])(
    func: (K, Iterator[V], GroupState[S]) => Iterator[U])

Example use case that specifies an initial state to the flatMapGroupsWithState operator:

val fruitCountFunc =(key: String, values: Iterator[String], state: GroupState[RunningCount]) => {
  val count = state.getOption.map(_.count).getOrElse(0L) + valList.size
  state.update(new RunningCount(count))
  Iterator((key, count.toString))
}

val fruitCountInitialDS: Dataset[(String, RunningCount)] = Seq(
  ("apple", new RunningCount(1)),
  ("orange", new RunningCount(2)),
  ("mango", new RunningCount(5)),
).toDS()

val fruitCountInitial = initialState.groupByKey(x => x._1).mapValues(_._2)

fruitStream
  .groupByKey(x => x)
  .flatMapGroupsWithState(Update, GroupStateTimeout.NoTimeout, fruitCountInitial)(fruitCountFunc)

Example use case that specifies an initial state to the mapGroupsWithState operator:

val fruitCountFunc =(key: String, values: Iterator[String], state: GroupState[RunningCount]) => {
  val count = state.getOption.map(_.count).getOrElse(0L) + valList.size
  state.update(new RunningCount(count))
  (key, count.toString)
}

val fruitCountInitialDS: Dataset[(String, RunningCount)] = Seq(
  ("apple", new RunningCount(1)),
  ("orange", new RunningCount(2)),
  ("mango", new RunningCount(5)),
).toDS()

val fruitCountInitial = initialState.groupByKey(x => x._1).mapValues(_._2)

fruitStream
  .groupByKey(x => x)
  .mapGroupsWithState(GroupStateTimeout.NoTimeout, fruitCountInitial)(fruitCountFunc)