[SPARK-8373] [PYSPARK] Add emptyRDD to pyspark and fix the issue when calling sum on an empty RDD

This PR fixes the sum issue and also adds `emptyRDD` so that it's easy to create a test case.

Author: zsxwing <zsxwing@gmail.com>

Closes #6826 from zsxwing/python-emptyRDD and squashes the following commits:

b36993f [zsxwing] Update the return type to JavaRDD[T]
71df047 [zsxwing] Add emptyRDD to pyspark and fix the issue when calling sum on an empty RDD

3 files changed, 15 insertions, 1 deletions

diff --git a/python/pyspark/context.py b/python/pyspark/context.py
index 44d90f1437..90b2fffbb9 100644
--- a/python/pyspark/context.py
+++ b/python/pyspark/context.py
@@ -324,6 +324,12 @@ class SparkContext(object):
         with SparkContext._lock:
             SparkContext._active_spark_context = None
 
+    def emptyRDD(self):
+        """
+        Create an RDD that has no partitions or elements.
+        """
+        return RDD(self._jsc.emptyRDD(), self, NoOpSerializer())
+
     def range(self, start, end=None, step=1, numSlices=None):
         """
         Create a new RDD of int containing elements from `start` to `end`
diff --git a/python/pyspark/rdd.py b/python/pyspark/rdd.py
index 98a8ff8606..20c0bc93f4 100644
--- a/python/pyspark/rdd.py
+++ b/python/pyspark/rdd.py
@@ -960,7 +960,7 @@ class RDD(object):
         >>> sc.parallelize([1.0, 2.0, 3.0]).sum()
         6.0
         """
-        return self.mapPartitions(lambda x: [sum(x)]).reduce(operator.add)
+        return self.mapPartitions(lambda x: [sum(x)]).fold(0, operator.add)
 
     def count(self):
         """
diff --git a/python/pyspark/tests.py b/python/pyspark/tests.py
index f9fb37f7fc..11b402e6df 100644
--- a/python/pyspark/tests.py
+++ b/python/pyspark/tests.py
@@ -458,6 +458,14 @@ class RDDTests(ReusedPySparkTestCase):
         self.assertEqual(id + 1, id2)
         self.assertEqual(id2, rdd2.id())
 
+    def test_empty_rdd(self):
+        rdd = self.sc.emptyRDD()
+        self.assertTrue(rdd.isEmpty())
+
+    def test_sum(self):
+        self.assertEqual(0, self.sc.emptyRDD().sum())
+        self.assertEqual(6, self.sc.parallelize([1, 2, 3]).sum())
+
     def test_save_as_textfile_with_unicode(self):
         # Regression test for SPARK-970
         x = u"\u00A1Hola, mundo!"