How to : working with HBase Filter API

• org.apache.hadoop.hbase.filter

        HBase provides Filter to perform searches for RowKey, Column Family, Column & Column Values. It could be anything from Binary comparator, Column Value, Prefix Filter, Regex to Timestamp filters etc.
A complete list is available at HBase Filter API documentation page.


You can create a FilterList which may contain number of FilterList as its child. Each Filter in a FilterList evaluates on either FilterList.Operator.MUST_PASS_ONE or FilterList.Operator.MUST_PASS_ALL .


Once Filter/FilterList is created  (eg: yourFilterList.addFilter(yourFilter); ), You should add it to Scan object (eg: scan.setFilter(yourFilterList); ). that's it. At this point you are ready to call getScanner method with HTable object instance. It returns you a iterable ResultScanner which contains number of rows matching your Filter criteria.