Implementation:Heibaiying BigData Notes HBaseUtils CreateTable

Knowledge Sources	BigData-Notes HBase API
Domains	NoSQL, Big_Data
Last Updated	2026-02-10 10:00 GMT

Overview

Concrete tool for creating HBase tables with specified column families provided by the HBaseUtils utility class.

Description

The HBaseUtils.createTable() method encapsulates the complete HBase 2.x table creation workflow. It performs the following steps:

Obtains an Admin handle from the shared connection.
Checks if the table already exists using admin.tableExists().
If the table exists, returns false without modification.
If the table does not exist, builds a TableDescriptor with ColumnFamilyDescriptor entries for each specified column family.
Calls admin.createTable() and returns true on success.

This method uses the HBase 2.x builder pattern (TableDescriptorBuilder and ColumnFamilyDescriptorBuilder) rather than the deprecated 1.x classes.

Usage

Call this method during application initialization or schema setup to ensure required tables exist. The existence check makes it safe to call repeatedly (idempotent).

Code Reference

Source Location

code/Hbase/hbase-java-api-2.x/src/main/java/com/heibaiying/HBaseUtils.java (Lines 36-54)

Signature

public static boolean createTable(String tableName, List<String> columnFamilies) throws IOException

Import

import org.apache.hadoop.hbase.TableName;
import org.apache.hadoop.hbase.client.Admin;
import org.apache.hadoop.hbase.client.TableDescriptorBuilder;
import org.apache.hadoop.hbase.client.ColumnFamilyDescriptorBuilder;
import org.apache.hadoop.hbase.client.TableDescriptor;
import org.apache.hadoop.hbase.client.ColumnFamilyDescriptor;
import java.util.List;

I/O Contract

Inputs

Name	Type	Required	Description
tableName	String	Yes	The name of the HBase table to create (e.g., `"users"`).
columnFamilies	List<String>	Yes	A list of column family names to attach to the table (e.g., `["info", "metrics"]`).

Outputs

Name	Type	Description
result	boolean	Returns `true` if the table was created successfully; `false` if the table already exists.

Usage Examples

import java.util.Arrays;
import java.util.List;

// Define column families for the table
List<String> columnFamilies = Arrays.asList("info", "metrics");

// Create the table (returns false if it already exists)
boolean created = HBaseUtils.createTable("users", columnFamilies);

if (created) {
    System.out.println("Table 'users' created successfully.");
} else {
    System.out.println("Table 'users' already exists.");
}

The internal implementation builds descriptors using the 2.x builder pattern:

// Internal logic (simplified)
Admin admin = connection.getAdmin();
TableName table = TableName.valueOf(tableName);

if (admin.tableExists(table)) {
    return false;
}

TableDescriptorBuilder builder = TableDescriptorBuilder.newBuilder(table);
for (String cf : columnFamilies) {
    ColumnFamilyDescriptor cfd = ColumnFamilyDescriptorBuilder
        .newBuilder(cf.getBytes())
        .build();
    builder.setColumnFamily(cfd);
}
admin.createTable(builder.build());
return true;

Related Pages

Implements Principle

Principle:Heibaiying_BigData_Notes_HBase_Table_Creation

Requires Environment

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Heuristic

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