diff --git a/sql/core/src/test/scala/org/apache/spark/sql/DataFrameComplexTypeSuite.scala b/sql/core/src/test/scala/org/apache/spark/sql/DataFrameComplexTypeSuite.scala
index 1230b921aa279..3d48f9d095add 100644
--- a/sql/core/src/test/scala/org/apache/spark/sql/DataFrameComplexTypeSuite.scala
+++ b/sql/core/src/test/scala/org/apache/spark/sql/DataFrameComplexTypeSuite.scala
@@ -20,6 +20,7 @@ package org.apache.spark.sql
 import org.apache.spark.sql.catalyst.DefinedByConstructorParams
 import org.apache.spark.sql.functions._
 import org.apache.spark.sql.test.SharedSQLContext
+import org.apache.spark.sql.types.{MetadataBuilder, StringType, StructField, StructType}
 
 /**
  * A test suite to test DataFrame/SQL functionalities with complex types (i.e. array, struct, map).
@@ -60,6 +61,15 @@ class DataFrameComplexTypeSuite extends QueryTest with SharedSQLContext {
     assert(nullIntRow == org.apache.spark.sql.Row(null))
   }
 
+  test("SPARK-15642 extracting from struct preserves metadata") {
+    val metadata = new MetadataBuilder().putString("key", "value").build()
+
+    val df = spark.createDataFrame(sparkContext.parallelize(Seq(Row(Row("foo")))),
+      StructType(Seq(StructField("struct", StructType(
+        Seq(StructField("str", StringType, false, metadata)))))))
+    assert(df.select(df("struct")("str")).schema.fields(0).metadata === metadata)
+  }
+
   test("SPARK-15285 Generated SpecificSafeProjection.apply method grows beyond 64KB") {
     val ds100_5 = Seq(S100_5()).toDS()
     ds100_5.rdd.count