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Hadoop streaming is a utility that comes with the Hadoop distribution. This utility allows you to create and run Map/Reduce jobs with any executable or script as the mapper and/or the reducer.

Example Using Python

For Hadoop streaming, we are considering the word-count problem. Any job in Hadoop must have two phases: mapper and reducer. We have written codes for the mapper and the reducer in python script to run it under Hadoop. One can also write the same in Perl and Ruby.

Mapper Phase Code

!/usr/bin/python

import sys

# Input takes from standard input for myline in sys.stdin: 
   # Remove whitespace either side 
   myline = myline.strip() 

   # Break the line into words 
   words = myline.split() 

   # Iterate the words list
   for myword in words:
      # Write the results to standard output 
      print '%s\t%s' % (myword, 1)

Make sure this file has execution permission (chmod +x /home/ expert/hadoop-1.2.1/mapper.py).

Reducer Phase Code

#!/usr/bin/python

from operator import itemgetter 
import sys 

current_word = ""
current_count = 0 
word = "" 

# Input takes from standard input for myline in sys.stdin: 
   # Remove whitespace either side 
   myline = myline.strip() 

   # Split the input we got from mapper.py word, 
   count = myline.split('\t', 1) 

   # Convert count variable to integer 
   try: 
      count = int(count) 

   except ValueError: 
      # Count was not a number, so silently ignore this line continue

   if current_word == word: 
   current_count += count 
   else: 
      if current_word: 
         # Write result to standard output print '%s\t%s' % (current_word, current_count) 
   
      current_count = count
      current_word = word

# Do not forget to output the last word if needed! 
if current_word == word: 
   print '%s\t%s' % (current_word, current_count)

Save the mapper and reducer codes in mapper.py and reducer.py in Hadoop home directory. Make sure these files have execution permission (chmod +x mapper.py and chmod +x reducer.py). As python is indentation sensitive so the same code can be download from the below link.

Execution of WordCount Program

$ $HADOOP_HOME/bin/hadoop jar contrib/streaming/hadoop-streaming-1.
2.1.jar \
   -input input_dirs \ 
   -output output_dir \ 
   -mapper <path/mapper.py \ 
   -reducer <path/reducer.py

Where “\” is used for line continuation for clear readability.

For Example,

./bin/hadoop jar contrib/streaming/hadoop-streaming-1.2.1.jar -input myinput -output myoutput -mapper /home/expert/hadoop-1.2.1/mapper.py -reducer /home/expert/hadoop-1.2.1/reducer.py

How Streaming Works

In the above example, both the mapper and the reducer are python scripts that read the input from standard input and emit the output to standard output. The utility will create a Map/Reduce job, submit the job to an appropriate cluster, and monitor the progress of the job until it completes.

When a script is specified for mappers, each mapper task will launch the script as a separate process when the mapper is initialized. As the mapper task runs, it converts its inputs into lines and feed the lines to the standard input (STDIN) of the process. In the meantime, the mapper collects the line-oriented outputs from the standard output (STDOUT) of the process and converts each line into a key/value pair, which is collected as the output of the mapper. By default, the prefix of a line up to the first tab character is the key and the rest of the line (excluding the tab character) will be the value. If there is no tab character in the line, then the entire line is considered as the key and the value is null. However, this can be customized, as per one need.

When a script is specified for reducers, each reducer task will launch the script as a separate process, then the reducer is initialized. As the reducer task runs, it converts its input key/values pairs into lines and feeds the lines to the standard input (STDIN) of the process. In the meantime, the reducer collects the line-oriented outputs from the standard output (STDOUT) of the process, converts each line into a key/value pair, which is collected as the output of the reducer. By default, the prefix of a line up to the first tab character is the key and the rest of the line (excluding the tab character) is the value. However, this can be customized as per specific requirements.

Important Commands