Apache Spark Connect Client for Swift

This is an experimental Swift library to show how to connect to a remote Apache Spark Connect Server and run SQL statements to manipulate remote data.

So far, this library project is tracking the upstream changes like the Apache Spark 4.0.0 RC7 release and Apache Arrow project's Swift-support.

Resources

• Homepage
• Swift Package Index
• Library Documentation

Requirement

• Apache Spark 4.0.0 RC7 (May 2025)
• Swift 6.0 (2024) or 6.1 (2025)
• gRPC Swift 2.2 (May 2025)
• gRPC Swift Protobuf 1.3 (May 2025)
• gRPC Swift NIO Transport 1.1 (May 2025)
• FlatBuffers v25.2.10 (February 2025)
• Apache Arrow Swift

How to use in your apps

Create a Swift project.

mkdir SparkConnectSwiftApp
cd SparkConnectSwiftApp
swift package init --name SparkConnectSwiftApp --type executable

Add SparkConnect package to the dependency like the following

$ cat Package.swift
import PackageDescription

let package = Package(
  name: "SparkConnectSwiftApp",
  platforms: [
    .macOS(.v15)
  ],
  dependencies: [
    .package(url: "https://github.com/apache/spark-connect-swift.git", branch: "main")
  ],
  targets: [
    .executableTarget(
      name: "SparkConnectSwiftApp",
      dependencies: [.product(name: "SparkConnect", package: "spark-connect-swift")]
    )
  ]
)

Use SparkSession of SparkConnect module in Swift.

$ cat Sources/main.swift

import SparkConnect

let spark = try await SparkSession.builder.getOrCreate()
print("Connected to Apache Spark \(await spark.version) Server")

let statements = [
  "DROP TABLE IF EXISTS t",
  "CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS t(a INT) USING ORC",
  "INSERT INTO t VALUES (1), (2), (3)",
]

for s in statements {
  print("EXECUTE: \(s)")
  _ = try await spark.sql(s).count()
}
print("SELECT * FROM t")
try await spark.sql("SELECT * FROM t").cache().show()

try await spark.range(10).filter("id % 2 == 0").write.mode("overwrite").orc("/tmp/orc")
try await spark.read.orc("/tmp/orc").show()

await spark.stop()

Run your Swift application.

$ swift run
...
Connected to Apache Spark 4.0.0 Server
EXECUTE: DROP TABLE IF EXISTS t
EXECUTE: CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS t(a INT)
EXECUTE: INSERT INTO t VALUES (1), (2), (3)
SELECT * FROM t
+---+
| a |
+---+
| 2 |
| 1 |
| 3 |
+---+
+----+
| id |
+----+
| 2  |
| 6  |
| 0  |
| 8  |
| 4  |
+----+

You can find more complete examples including Spark SQL REPL, Web Server and Streaming applications in the Examples directory.

This library also supports SPARK_REMOTE environment variable to specify the Spark Connect connection string in order to provide more options.