[ANN] MetaArrays: Add metadata to your arrays

Package Announcements
1

Hello all,

I have just made a small package available in the General registry: MetaArrays. It provides a generic means of adding additional meta-data to an array, (typically) using a NamedTuple. (It is perhaps similar in spirit to ImagesMetadata.jl, but takes a slightly different approach). I have found it handy in my own projects, and thought others might as well.

It’s probably easiest to demonstrate with an example (also found in README.md)

julia> y = meta(rand(10,10),val1="value1")
julia> x = meta(rand(10,10),val2="value2")

julia> z = x.*y
julia> z.val1
"value1"

The main advantage I find in working with this particular approach is that I can:

1.) Specialize methods over the type of the array, or the type of the particular metadata.

2.) Readily leverage the broadcasting and array tooling for a new array type, without having to think through all of the methods I have to overwrite. I’ve already done that work once, within MetaArrays, and don’t have to re-think through it each time.

Check out the README.md for more details.

I would appreciate any feedback (positive or negative) about the package.

10 Likes
2

Neat! I’ve been thinking about something like this for tables (e.g. TypedTables.Table), to allow for plotting recipes for different kinds of tables without type piracy.

3

Interesting! I’m not sure I understand. Is the idea that you would be able to attach some set of attributes to a table that plotting could use? How would you deal with the fact that data.column_name is a very natural way to access columns of table. Seems like you would need a different spelling to get at the attributes.

4

you would be able to attach some set of attributes to a table that plotting could use

No, I was thinking more like metadata that indicates the “type” of the table and that a plotting recipe can specialize on.

5

A new version of MetaArrays (v0.2.6) is now available. It fixes a few bugs and improves the README a bit.