DataFrame.approxQuantile was not accepting a single Column object when passed to the col parameter.

[teja0909]

Please answer these questions before submitting your issue. Thanks!

1. What version of Python are you using?
   python 3.10

2. What operating system and processor architecture are you using?

   Windows-10-10.0.26200-SP0

3. What are the component versions in the environment (pip freeze)?

snowflake-snowpark-python -1.47.0

4. What did you do?

 data = [
    Row(id=1, dept="IT", salary=5000),
    Row(id=2, dept="IT", salary=7000),
    Row(id=3, dept="HR", salary=4000),
    Row(id=4, dept="HR", salary=4500),
]

df = session.create_dataframe(data)
approx_q_column_object = df.approxQuantile(
        col("salary"),
        [0.5, 0.9]
    )

TypeError: Cannot convert a Column object into bool: please use '&' for 'and', '|' for 'or', '~' for 'not' if you're building DataFrame filter expressions. For example, use df.filter((col1 > 1) & (col2 > 2)) instead of df.filter(col1 > 1 and col2 > 2).
5. What did you expect to see?

Instead of error , I am expecting Dataframe with the results.

6. Can you set logging to DEBUG and collect the logs?

   import logging
   
   for logger_name in ('snowflake.snowpark', 'snowflake.connector'):
       logger = logging.getLogger(logger_name)
       logger.setLevel(logging.DEBUG)
       ch = logging.StreamHandler()
       ch.setLevel(logging.DEBUG)
       ch.setFormatter(logging.Formatter('%(asctime)s - %(threadName)s %(filename)s:%(lineno)d - %(funcName)s() - %(levelname)s - %(message)s'))
       logger.addHandler(ch)
   

[sfc-gh-sghosh]

Hello @teja0909 ,

Thanks for raising the issue.

This is working expected.

Transformations: Transformations are Lazy. They don't actually move any data or calculate anything yet; they just build a "To-Do list" (a SQL query) for Snowflake.

Examples: .select(), .filter(), .with_column()

Actions:
They execute the query and bring the result back to my Python script.

Examples: .collect(), .show(), .count(), and .approx_quantile()

When you wrote df.approx_quantile(col("salary"), [0.5, 0.9]):

approx_quantile is an Action. It expects a simple string identifier for the column.

where as col("salary") is a Transformation object.

Because approx_quantile isn't built to parse a Column Object, Python tried to treat the Column object as a simple True/False value, leading to that TypeError.

So the workaround is to pass a string value

from snowflake.snowpark import Session, Row
from snowflake.snowpark.functions import col

data = [
    Row(id=1, dept="IT", salary=5000),
    Row(id=2, dept="IT", salary=7000),
    Row(id=3, dept="HR", salary=4000),
    Row(id=4, dept="HR", salary=4500),
]

df = session.create_dataframe(data)


approx_q_column_object = df.approx_quantile(
    "salary", 
    [0.5, 0.9]
)

print(f"50th Percentile: {approx_q_column_object[0]}")
print(f"90th Percentile: {approx_q_column_object[1]}")
print(f"Full List: {approx_q_column_object}")

50th Percentile: 4750.0
90th Percentile: 6400.0
Full List: [4750.0, 6400.0]