Dewey Dunnington created ARROW-15471: ----------------------------------------
Summary: [R] ExtensionType support in R Key: ARROW-15471 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/ARROW-15471 Project: Apache Arrow Issue Type: Improvement Components: R Reporter: Dewey Dunnington In Python there is support for extension types that consists of a registration step that defines functions to handle metadata serialization and deserialization. In R, any extension name or metadata at the top level is currently obliterated on import. To implement geometry reading and writing to Parquet, IPC, and/or Feather, we will need to at the very least have the extension name and metadata preserved (in R), and at best provide a registration step to customize the behaviour of the resulting Array/DataType. Reprex for R: {code:R} # remotes::install_github("paleolimbot/narrow") library(narrow) carray <- as_narrow_array(1:5) carray$schema$metadata[["ARROW:extension:name"]] <- "extension name!" carray$schema$metadata[["ARROW:extension:metadata"]] <- "bananas" carray$schema$metadata[["something else"]] <- "more bananas" array <- from_narrow_array(carray, arrow::Array) carray2 <- as_narrow_array(array) carray2$schema$metadata[["ARROW:extension:name"]] #> NULL carray2$schema$metadata[["ARROW:extension:metadata"]] #> NULL carray2$schema$metadata[["something else"]] #> NULL {code} There is some discussion of that as a solution to ARROW-14378, including an example of how pandas implements the 'interval' extension type (example contributed by [~jorisvandenbossche]). For the Interval example, there are some different parts living in different places: - The Arrow Extension Type definition for pandas' interval type: https://github.com/pandas-dev/pandas/blob/fc6b441ba527ca32b460ae4f4f5a6802335497f9/pandas/core/arrays/_arrow_utils.py#L88-L136 - The __from_arrow__ implementation (doing the conversion to arrow): https://github.com/pandas-dev/pandas/blob/fc6b441ba527ca32b460ae4f4f5a6802335497f9/pandas/core/arrays/interval.py#L1405-L1455 - The __from_arrow__ implementation (conversion arrow -> pandas): https://github.com/pandas-dev/pandas/blob/fc6b441ba527ca32b460ae4f4f5a6802335497f9/pandas/core/dtypes/dtypes.py#L1227-L1255 -- This message was sent by Atlassian Jira (v8.20.1#820001)