# Writing Parquet files
**URL:** https://discourse.julialang.org/t/writing-parquet-files/11221
**Category:** General Usage
**Created:** [May 29, 2018, 7:49am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/writing-parquet-files/11221 "2018-05-29T07:49:48Z")
**Posts on this page:** 9
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@paulmelis](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/paulmelis)
#### Post date: [October 2, 2020, 9:33am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/writing-parquet-files/11221/21 "2020-10-02T09:33:44Z")
> [@ExpandingMan](#):
>
> Even in Python it seems that people always deal with parquets using spark. This does seem like ridiculous overkill depending on what you’re doing, but my impression is that parquets were designed for enormous datasets.
Late reply, but [pyarrow](https://arrow.apache.org/docs/python/api/formats.html) can be used to read/write parquet files in Python without having to have Spark at hand. It only needs Pandas (at least, that’s the combination I’ve used). Plus, parquet is quite a nice file format, even for moderate datasets, say a few GBs.
---
### Author:  [@xiaodai](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/xiaodai)
#### Post date: [October 2, 2020, 2:40pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/writing-parquet-files/11221/22 "2020-10-02T14:40:29Z")
> [@paulmelis](#):
>
> parquet is quite a nice file format
that’s controversial
---
### Author:  [@paulmelis](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/paulmelis)
#### Post date: [October 2, 2020, 3:25pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/writing-parquet-files/11221/23 "2020-10-02T15:25:25Z")
> [@xiaodai](#):
>
> that’s controversial
In what way? It’s a column-based storage format that supports compression and things like explicit nulls. It has its use cases
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### Author:  [@tk3369](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/tk3369)
#### Post date: [October 2, 2020, 5:55pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/writing-parquet-files/11221/24 "2020-10-02T17:55:18Z")
What would it take to support `Date` columns?
```julia
julia> df = DataFrame(date = Date(now()), x = 1:1000, y = rand(1000));
julia> write_parquet("test.parquet", df)
ERROR: "Column whose `eltype` is Date is not supported at this stage. \n"
Stacktrace:
[1] write_parquet(::String, ::DataFrame; compression_codec::String) at /home/tkwong/.julia/packages/Parquet/2HfNB/src/writer.jl:479
[2] write_parquet(::String, ::DataFrame) at /home/tkwong/.julia/packages/Parquet/2HfNB/src/writer.jl:464
```
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### Author:  [@xiaodai](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/xiaodai)
#### Post date: [October 3, 2020, 1:05am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/writing-parquet-files/11221/25 "2020-10-03T01:05:46Z")
No native categorical support.
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### Author:  [@xiaodai](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/xiaodai)
#### Post date: [October 3, 2020, 4:42am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/writing-parquet-files/11221/26 "2020-10-03T04:42:58Z")
Hmm think have to revive the 96 bytes
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### Author:  [@tk3369](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/tk3369)
#### Post date: [October 4, 2020, 7:02pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/writing-parquet-files/11221/27 "2020-10-04T19:02:34Z")
Interestingly, `DateTime` works.
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### Author:  [@merlin](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/merlin)
#### Post date: [November 12, 2020, 5:13am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/writing-parquet-files/11221/28 "2020-11-12T05:13:44Z")
I could not make this work:
```nohighlight
using DataFrames, Dates
df = DataFrame(date = DateTime(now()), x = 1:1000, y = rand(1000));
write_parquet("test.parquet", df)
ERROR: "Column whose `eltype` is DateTime is not supported at this stage. \n"
```
---
### Author:  [@xiaodai](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/xiaodai)
#### Post date: [November 12, 2020, 6:59am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/writing-parquet-files/11221/29 "2020-11-12T06:59:02Z")
i thought someone merged a datetime fix. Try the master branch.
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