Hi Amit,

One way to accomplish this would be to create a custom writable
implementation, TextOrIntWritable, that has fields for both.  It could look
something like:

class TextOrIntWritable implements Writable {
  private boolean isText;
  private Text text;
  private IntWritable integer;

  void writeFields(DataOutput out) {
    out.writeBoolean(isText);
    if (isText) {
      text.writeFields(out);
    } else {
      integer.writeFields(out);
    }
  }

  [... readFields method that works in a similar way]
}

-Sandy

On Sun, Feb 10, 2013 at 4:00 AM, Amit Sela <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Has anyone ever used some kind of a "generic output key" for a mapreduce
> job ?
>
> I have a job running multiple tasks and I want them to be able to use both
> Text and IntWritable as output key classes.
>
> Any suggestions ?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Amit.
>

Why not just write out the int as a numeric string?

On Feb 10, 2013, at 1:07 PM, Sandy Ryza <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Hi Amit,
>
> One way to accomplish this would be to create a custom writable implementation, TextOrIntWritable, that has fields for both.  It could look something like:
>
> class TextOrIntWritable implements Writable {
>   private boolean isText;
>   private Text text;
>   private IntWritable integer;
>
>   void writeFields(DataOutput out) {
>     out.writeBoolean(isText);
>     if (isText) {
>       text.writeFields(out);
>     } else {
>       integer.writeFields(out);
>     }
>   }
>
>   [... readFields method that works in a similar way]
> }
>
> -Sandy
>
> On Sun, Feb 10, 2013 at 4:00 AM, Amit Sela <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Has anyone ever used some kind of a "generic output key" for a mapreduce job ?
>
> I have a job running multiple tasks and I want them to be able to use both Text and IntWritable as output key classes.
>
> Any suggestions ?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Amit.
>

Michael Segel  | (m) 312.755.9623

Segel and Associates