polspec

One schema for your Polars data. Generate it, validate it, watch it drift.

Your tests need fixtures, and your pipeline needs a contract. Written separately, they drift apart. polspec lets you write the schema once, as a Polars class, and use it for both: realistic data to test against, and validation of the data that turns up.

import datetime as dt

import polars as pl
from polspec import ColSpec, FrameSpec

class Orders(FrameSpec):
    order_id = ColSpec(pl.Int64, bounds=(1, 10**9), unique=True)
    status   = ColSpec(pl.Enum(["NEW", "PAID", "SHIPPED"]), weights=[0.2, 0.5, 0.3])
    total    = ColSpec(pl.Float64, bounds=(0, 5_000), distribution="lognormal",
                       distribution_params={"mean": 4, "std": 1})
    placed   = ColSpec(pl.Date, bounds=(dt.date(2025, 1, 1), dt.date(2025, 12, 31)),
                       nullable=True, null_probability=0.05)
    email    = ColSpec(pl.String, format="email")

orders = Orders.generate(1_000_000, seed=42)   # a million rows in ~12 ms
Orders.validate(orders)                        # ~27 ms; raises on any breach

┌───────────┬────────┬────────────┬────────────┬───────────────────────┐
│ order_id  ┆ status ┆ total      ┆ placed     ┆ email                 │
│ i64       ┆ enum   ┆ f64        ┆ date       ┆ str                   │
╞═══════════╪════════╪════════════╪════════════╪═══════════════════════╡
│ 830916752 ┆ PAID   ┆ 9.187332   ┆ 2025-12-30 ┆ dupebca@xdcbivwq.dev  │
│ 366447256 ┆ PAID   ┆ 19.02604   ┆ 2025-11-28 ┆ hinro@ewzc.com        │
│ 922459406 ┆ PAID   ┆ 336.930617 ┆ 2025-04-11 ┆ jp5uo7@mgayhywoxn.com │
└───────────┴────────┴────────────┴────────────┴───────────────────────┘

What you get

• Fast. The generator is a Rust extension that fills columns in parallel. validate() compiles every check on every column into one Polars aggregation, so a wide table costs about what a narrow one does. Timings here are from a laptop; more are in Comparison.
• Lazy and streaming. scan() is a LazyFrame: filter and project it like any other. The sinks write Parquet, IPC, CSV or NDJSON in batches, never holding the frame in memory, and a unique column stays unique across every batch.
• Every Polars dtype. Integers to 128 bits, Decimal, time-zoned Datetime, Enum, Categorical, and List, Array and Struct nested to any depth (plus Map on Polars 2). Bounds, choices with weights, distributions, formats such as email and uuid4, uniqueness, nulls and NaNs are all declared per column.
• Tables that relate. Foreign keys within and across specs, conditional rules, composite keys and hierarchies are generated to hold, and validated. Checks written as Polars expressions are enforced at validation.
• Validation as data. inspect() returns every finding at once, with the offending rows a lazy filter away, and splits a frame into what passed and what to quarantine.
• Learn from real data. profile() turns a frame into a spec, finding formats, frequencies, distributions and null rates; synthesize() makes a stand-in with the same shape.
• Drift with statistics behind it. A move is reported only when it is both significant and large, as breaking or compatible.
• Specs as files and docs. Save and load specs as YAML or Python. Render a Markdown data dictionary or a Mermaid ER diagram.
• A CLI for your pipeline. polspec validate, generate, drift and synthesize, with exit codes for CI.
• Deterministic. The same seed gives the same data on every Polars from 1.39 to 2.x, checked case by case in CI.

A quick tour

Generate lazily

scan() returns a LazyFrame, so Polars pushes filters and projections into it:

paid = (
    Orders.scan(10_000_000, seed=1)
    .filter(pl.col("status") == "PAID")
    .select("order_id", "total")
    .collect()                                            # ~0.2 s
)
Orders.sink_parquet("orders.parquet", 1_000_000, seed=1)  # streamed in batches

Validate and quarantine

inspect() never raises: it reports every finding, with the rows behind it.

broken = orders.with_columns(
    pl.when(pl.col("order_id") % 1_000 == 0).then(-1.0).otherwise("total").alias("total")
)
report = Orders.inspect(broken)          # 1 finding: 1,053 totals out of bounds
clean = report.passing_rows().collect()  # the other 998,947 rows

Profile real data

from polspec import profile, synthesize

spec = profile(orders.head(100_000))
spec["total"].distribution                         # 'lognormal', fitted
fake = synthesize(orders.head(100_000), seed=1)    # a stand-in with the same shape

Catch drift

print(Orders.drift(orders.filter(pl.col("status") != "NEW")))

Drift: 0 breaking, 2 compatible, DataFrame against 'Orders'
  - [compatible] Column 'status': 1 of 3 declared value(s) never appear: ['NEW']
  - [compatible] Column 'status': frequencies moved by 20.0% over 800,231 value(s): ...

From the command line

polspec schema infer orders.csv -o orders_spec.py
polspec validate orders_spec.py orders.csv --failing rejected.csv
polspec drift orders_spec.py orders.csv --markdown
polspec generate orders_spec.py -n 1000000 -o fixture.parquet --seed 1

Install

uv add polspec           # or: pip install polspec

polspec works with Polars 1.39 and later, Polars 2 included, on Python 3.12 to 3.14. Wheels are published for Linux (x86_64, aarch64), macOS (Intel and Apple silicon) and Windows (x86_64), so you don't need a Rust toolchain.

Pre-1.0. The API is settling toward a 1.0 with written stability promises. Until then, see Roadmap and stability, and Known limitations for what polspec does not do. Each limitation there is backed by a test that fails the moment it stops being true.

Documentation

maxwellb13.github.io/polspec: start with Getting started, find a task among the how-to guides, or look a name up in the API reference.

Contributing

Setting up a checkout, the checks CI runs and the release process are in CONTRIBUTING.md. What changed, and when, is in CHANGELOG.md.

License

MIT.