vtfunc 0.2.0

UNKNOWN

## vtfunc

Implement SQLite [table-valued functions](http://sqlite.org/vtab.html#tabfunc2) using Python.

### Rationale

SQLite makes it easy to define scalar and aggregate functions, but it is more challenging to create functions that return multiple values. Scalar functions accept zero or more parameters and return a single value. Aggregate functions accept parameters from any number of input rows, and then generate a final scalar value.

To create functions that return multiple values, it is necessary to create a [virtual table](http://sqlite.org/vtab.html). SQLite has the concept of "eponymous" virtual tables, which are virtual tables that can be called like a function and do not require explicit creation using DDL statements.

The `vtfunc` module abstracts away the complexity of creating an eponymous virtual table, allowing you to write your own multi-value SQLite functions in Python.

### Example

Suppose we want to create a function that, given a regular expression and an input string, returns all matching subgroups in the input string. For instance, if our regex was `'[0-9]+'` and our input string was `'123 xxx 456 yyy 789 zzz 0'`, the function should return four rows:

* `123`
* `456`
* `789`
* `0`

With the `vtab` module it is very easy to implement this:

```python
import re

from vtfunc import TableFunction


class RegexSearch(TableFunction):
params = ['regex', 'search_string']
columns = ['match']
name = 'regex_search'

def initialize(self, regex=None, search_string=None):
self._iter = re.finditer(regex, search_string)

def iterate(self, idx):
# We do not need `idx`, so just ignore it.
return (next(self._iter).group(0),)
```

To use our function, we need to register the module with a SQLite connection, then call it using a `SELECT` query:

```python

import sqlite3

conn = sqlite3.connect(':memory:') # Create an in-memory database.

RegexSearch.register(conn) # Register our module.

query_params = ('[0-9]+', '123 xxx 456 yyy 789 zzz 0')
cursor = conn.execute('SELECT * FROM regex_search(?, ?);', query_params)
print cursor.fetchall()
```

Let's say we have a table that contains a list of arbitrary messages and we want to capture all the e-mail addresses from that table. This is also easy using our table-valued function. We will query the `messages` table and pass the message body into our table-valued function. Then, for each email address we find, we'll return a row containing the message ID and the matching email address:

```python

email_regex = '[\w]+@[\w]+\.[\w]{2,3}' # Stupid simple email regex.
query = ('SELECT messages.id, regex_search.match '
'FROM messages, regex_search(?, messages.body)')
cursor = conn.execute(query, (email_regex,))
```

The resulting rows will look something like:

```

message id | email
-----------+-----------------------
1 | [e-mail]
1 | [e-mail]
1 | [e-mail]
3 | [e-mail]
3 | [e-mail]
... | ...
```

#### Important note

In the above example you will note that the parameters for our query actually change (because each row in the messages table has a different search string). This means that for this particular query, the `RegexSearch.initialize()` function will be called once for each row in the `messages` table.

### How it works

Behind-the-scenes, `vtfunc` is creating a [Virtual Table](http://sqlite.org/vtab.html) and filling in the various callbacks with wrappers around your user-defined function. There are two important methods that the wrapped virtual table implements:

* xBestIndex
* xFilter

When SQLite attempts to execute a query, it will call the xBestIndex method of the virtual table (possibly multiple times) trying to come up with the best query plan. The `vtfunc` module optimizes for those query plans which include values for all the parameters of the user-defined function. Since some user-defined functions may have optional parameters, query plans with only a subset of param values will be slightly penalized.

Since we have no visibility into what parameters the user *actually* passed in, and we don't know ahead of time which query plan SQLite suggests will be best, `vtfunc` just does its best to optimize for plans with the highest number of usable parameter values.

If you encounter a situation where you pass your function multiple parameters, but it doesn't receive all of them, it's the case that a less-than-optimal plan was used.

After the plan is chosen by calling xBestIndex, the query will execute by calling xFilter (possibly multiple times). xFilter has access to the actual query parameters, and it's responsibility is to initialize the cursor and call the user's initialize() callback with the parameters passed in.