vengeance 1.1.25

Library focusing on row-major organization of tabular data and control over the Excel application

For example usage, see:

https://github.com/michael-ross-ven/vengeance_example/blob/main/vengeance_example/flux_example.py
https://github.com/michael-ross-ven/vengeance_example/blob/main/vengeance_example/excel_example.py

Managing data stored as rows and columns shouldn't be complicated.

When given a list of lists in Python, your first instinct is to loop over rows and modify column values, in-place. It's the most natural way to think about the data, because conceptually, each row is some entity, and each column is a property of that row, much like a list of objects.

A headache when dealing with list of lists however, is having to keep track of columns by integer elements; it would be nice to replace the indices on each row with named attributes, and have these applied even when the columns are not known ahead of time, such as when pulling data from a sql table or csv file.

for row in matrix:
    row[17]            # what's in that 18th column again?

for row in matrix:
    row.customer_id    # oh, duh

Doesn't the pandas DataFrame already already solve this?

In a DataFrame, data is taken out of its native nested list format and is organized in column-major order, which comes with some advantages as well as drawbacks.

Row-major order:

    [['attribute_a', 'attribute_b', 'attribute_c'],
     ['a',           'b',           3.0],
     ['a',           'b',           3.0],
     ['a',           'b',           3.0]]

Column-major order:

    {'attribute_a': array(['a', 'a', 'a'], dtype='<U1'),
     'attribute_b': array(['b', 'b', 'b'], dtype='<U1'),
     'attribute_c': array([3.,   3.,  3.], dtype=float64)}

In column-major order, values in a single column are usually all of the same datatype, so can be packed into consecutive addresses in memory as an actual array. These contiguous elements along a single column can be iterated very quickly. But in a DataFrame, the ability to organize data where each row is some entity, and each column is a property of that row, is mind-numbingly slow. (DataFrame.iterrows() incurs a huge performance penalty, and can be 1,000x times slower to iterate than a built-in list)

DataFrames also take advantage of vectorization, where operations can be applied to an entire set of values at once. But removal of explicit loops requires specialized methods for almost every operation and modification, which makes the syntax more challenging. DataFrame transformations can be counter-inituitive to write and effortful to read, especially when method-chaining is overused.

# wait, what exactly does this do again?
df['column'] = np.sign(df.column.diff().fillna(0)).shift(-1).fillna(0) \
               .apply(lambda x: (x['column'].head(1),
                                 x.shape[0],
                                 x['start'].iloc[-1] - x['start'].iloc[0]))

DataFrame Advantages:

• vectorized operations on contiguous arrays are very fast

DataFrame Disadvantages:

• syntax doesnt always drive intuition
• iteration by rows is almost completely out of the question
  (& working with json files is notoriously difficult)
• managing datatypes can sometimes be problematic
• harder to debug / inspect when vectorized operations return an error

I mean, but why are we working in Python to begin with?

• emphasis on code readability
• less concerned about hyper-optimized execution times
• datatypes and array allocation are abstracted away
• so does the DataFrame really reinforce what makes Python so great?

"Explicit is better than implicit"
"Simple is better than complex"
"Sparse is better than dense"
"Readability counts"
"There should be one– and preferably only one –obvious way to do it"

vengeance.flux_cls

• similar idea behind a pandas DataFrame, but is more closely aligned with Python's design philosophy
• when you're willing to trade for a little bit of speed for a lot simplicity
• a lightweight, pure-python wrapper class around list of lists
• applies named attributes to rows; attribute values are mutable during iteration
• provides convenience aggregate operations (sort, filter, groupby, etc)
• excellent for prototyping and data-wrangling

row-major

# organized like csv data, attribute names are provided in first row
matrix = [['attribute_a', 'attribute_b', 'attribute_c'],
          ['a',           'b',           3.0],
          ['a',           'b',           3.0],
          ['a',           'b',           3.0]]
flux = vengeance.flux_cls(matrix)

# row attributes can be accessed by name or by index
for row in flux:
    a = row.attribute_a
    a = row['attribute_a']
    a = row[-1]
    a = row.values[:-2]

    row.attribute_a    = None
    row['attribute_a'] = None
    row[-1]            = None
    row.values[:2]     = [None, None]

# transformations are compositional and self-documenting
for row in flux:
    row.hypotenuse = math.sqrt(row.side_a**2 +,
                               row.side_b**2)

matrix = list(flux.values())

columns

# entire columns can be referenced with __getitem__ / __setitem__ syntax
column = flux['attribute_a']

flux.rename_columns({'attribute_a': 'renamed_a',
                     'attribute_b': 'renamed_b'})
flux.insert_columns((0, 'inserted_a'),
                    (2, 'inserted_b'))
flux.delete_columns('inserted_a',
                    'inserted_b')

sort / filter / apply

flux.sort('attribute_c')
flux.filter(lambda row: row.attribute_b != 'c')
u = flux.unique('attribute_a', 'attribute_b')

# apply functions like you'd normally do in Python: with comprehensions
flux['attribute_new'] = [some_function(v) for v in flux['attribute_a']]

groupby

matrix = [['year', 'month', 'random_float'],
          ['2000', '01',     random.uniform(0, 9)],
          ['2000', '02',     random.uniform(0, 9)],
          ['2001', '01',     random.uniform(0, 9)],
          ['2001', '01',     random.uniform(0, 9)],
          ['2001', '01',     random.uniform(0, 9)],
          ['2002', '01',     random.uniform(0, 9)]]
flux = flux_cls(matrix)

dict_1 = flux.map_rows_append('year', 'month')
countifs = {k: len(rows) for k, rows in dict_1.items()}
sumifs   = {k: sum(row.random_float for row in rows)
                                    for k, rows in dict_1.items()}

dict_2 = flux.map_rows_nested('year', 'month')
rows_1 = dict_1[('2001', '01')]
rows_2 = dict_2['2001']['01']

read / write files

flux.to_csv('file.csv')
flux = flux_cls.from_csv('file.csv')

flux.to_json('file.json')
flux = flux_cls.from_json('file.json')