xray: extended arrays for working with scientific datasets in Python¶
xray is a Python package for working with aligned sets of homogeneous, n-dimensional arrays. It implements flexible array operations and dataset manipulation for in-memory datasets within the Common Data Model widely used for self-describing scientific data (e.g., the NetCDF file format).
Why xray?¶
Adding dimensions names and coordinate values to numpy’s ndarray makes many powerful array operations possible:
- Apply operations over dimensions by name: x.sum('time').
- Select values by label instead of integer location: x.loc['2014-01-01'] or x.labeled(time='2014-01-01').
- Mathematical operations (e.g., x - y) vectorize across multiple dimensions (known in numpy as “broadcasting”) based on dimension names, regardless of their original order.
- Flexible split-apply-combine operations with groupby: x.groupby('time.dayofyear').mean().
- Database like aligment based on coordinate labels that smoothly handles missing values: x, y = xray.align(x, y, join='outer').
- Keep track of arbitrary metadata in the form of a Python dictionary: x.attrs.
xray aims to provide a data analysis toolkit as powerful as pandas but designed for working with homogeneous N-dimensional arrays instead of tabular data. Indeed, much of its design and internal functionality (in particular, fast indexing) is shamelessly borrowed from pandas.
Because xray implements the same data model as the NetCDF file format, xray datasets have a natural and portable serialization format. But it’s also easy to robustly convert an xray DataArray to and from a numpy ndarray or a pandas DataFrame or Series, providing compatibility with the full PyData ecosystem.
For a longer introduction to xray and its design goals, see the project’s GitHub page. The GitHub page is where to go to look at the code, report a bug or make your own contribution. If you have questions or more general feedback about xray, feel free to get in touch via Twitter or the mailing list.