Francesc Alted • Scott Prater

PyTables User's Guide

Hierarchical datasets in Python
Release 0.8

Table of Contents

1
 1.1Main Features
 1.2The Object Tree
 
2
 2.1Installation from source
 2.1.1Prerequisites
 2.1.2PyTables package installation
 2.2Binary installation (Windows)
 2.2.1Windows prerequisites
 2.2.2PyTables package installation
 
3
 3.1Getting started
 3.1.1Importing tables objects
 3.1.2Declaring a Column Descriptor
 3.1.3Creating a PyTables file from scratch
 3.1.4Creating a new group
 3.1.5Creating a new table
 3.1.6Reading (and selecting) data in a table
 3.1.7Creating new array objects
 3.1.8Closing the file and looking at its content
 3.2Browsing the object tree and appending to tables
 3.2.1Traversing the object tree
 3.2.2Setting and getting user attributes
 3.2.3Getting object metadata
 3.2.4Reading data from Array objects
 3.2.5Appending data to an existing table
 3.2.6And finally... how to delete rows from a table
 3.3Multidimensional table cells and automatic sanity checks
 3.3.1Shape checking
 3.3.2Field name checking
 3.3.3Data type checking
 
4
 4.1tables variables and functions
 4.1.1Global variables
 4.1.2Global functions
 4.2The File class
 4.2.1File instance variables
 4.2.2File methods
 4.2.3File special methods
 4.3The Group class
 4.3.1Group instance variables
 4.3.2Group methods
 4.3.3Group special methods
 4.4The Leaf class
 4.4.1Leaf instance variables
 4.4.2Leaf methods
 4.5The Table class
 4.5.1Table instance variables
 4.5.2Table methods
 4.5.3Table special methods
 4.5.4The Row class
 4.5.5The Cols class
 4.5.6The Column class
 4.6The Array class
 4.6.1Array instance variables
 4.6.2Array methods
 4.6.3Array special methods
 4.7The EArray class
 4.7.1EArray instance variables
 4.7.2EArray methods
 4.8The VLArray class
 4.8.1VLArray instance variables
 4.8.2VLArray methods
 4.8.3VLArray special methods
 4.9The UnImplemented class
 4.10The AttributeSet class
 4.10.1AttributeSet instance variables
 4.10.2AttributeSet methods
 4.11Declarative classes
 4.11.1The IsDescription class
 4.11.2The Col class and its descendants
 4.11.3The Atom class and its descendants.
 4.12Helper classes
 4.12.1The Filters class
 
5
 5.1Taking advantage of Psyco
 5.2Compression issues
 5.3Shuffling (or how to make the compression process more effective)
 5.4Informing PyTables about expected number of rows in tables
 5.5Selecting an User Entry Point (UEP) in your tree
 5.6Compacting your PyTables files
 
A
 
B
 B.1Mandatory attributes for a File
 B.2Mandatory attributes for a Group
 B.3Mandatory attributes, storage layout and supported datatypes for Leaves
 B.3.1Table format
 B.3.2Array format
 B.3.3EArray format
 B.3.4VLArray format
 
C
 C.1ptdump
 C.1.1Usage
 C.1.2A small tutorial on ptdump
 C.2ptrepack
 C.2.1Usage
 C.2.2A small tutorial on ptrepack