Range Slices In Cassandra With Hector

I thought I’d write up a simple tutorial on how do a simple range slice in Cassandra with Hector for people coming from the relational world.

I’m going to outline the Cassandra version of SELECT col_name_1 FROM table_name LIMIT 100

Step 1) Setup the connection pool and the client

CassandraClientPool pool = CassandraClientPoolFactory.INSTANCE.get();
CassandraClient client = pool.borrowClient("localhost", 9160);

Step 2) Define which Keyspace you want to use. This is equivalent to which DB or Schema.

Keyspace keyspace = client.getKeyspace("Keyspace1");

Step 3) Setup the slice predicate by defining which columns within the row you want returned. This is equivalent to SELECT col_name_1

// just look for one column for now
List colNames = new ArrayList();
colNames.add("column-name".getBytes());

// setup the slice predicate
SlicePredicate sp = new SlicePredicate();
sp.setColumn_names(colNames);

Step 4) Specify which Column Family to use. This is equivalent to a table or FROM table_name in SQL

// setup column parent (CF)
ColumnParent cp = new ColumnParent("Standard3");

Step 5) Execute the request. This is equivalent to executing a SQL query.

// get all the keys with a limit of 100 values returned
Map> map = keyspace.getRangeSlice(cp, sp, "", "", 100);

Note that the 3rd and 4th method args are empty strings. When you combine two empty strings for the start and end range, it is like saying SELECT col_name_1 FROM table_name without a WHERE clause.
Also if you have records that were deleted, the List of Column objects will be empty but the key will still be returned until is GC’d by Cassandra.

This example was used against a single Cassandra node using the Random Partitioner. Results will be returned to you in an unordered fashion.