Issue with DataFrame type dispatch

General Usage
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1

Hi guys, hope you are all well.
I am having an issue with multiple dispatch and the DataFrame type from DataFrames.jl.
Below is my code…

mutable struct RandomForestClassifier{P} <: Classifier
    predict::P
    storedata::Result
function RandomForestClassifier(X::Array, Y::Array, rng = Random.GLOBAL_RNG; max_depth = 6,
     min_node_records = 1,
    n_features_per_node = Int(floor(sqrt(size(X, 2)))), n_trees = 100, cuda = false)
    if cuda == true
        X = CuArray(X)
        Y = CuArray(Y)
    end
    storedata = fit(TREECLASS(), X, Y, rng, max_depth, min_node_records,
        Int(floor(sqrt(size(X, 2)))), n_trees)
    predict(xt::Array) = rf_predict(storedata, xt)
    new{typeof(predict)}(predict, storedata)
end
function RandomForestClassifier(X::DataFrame, Y::Array, rng = Random.GLOBAL_RNG;
    max_depth = 6,
     min_node_records = 1,
     weights = NoWeights(Dict()), cuda = false,
    n_features_per_node = Int(floor(sqrt(size(X, 2)))),
     n_trees = 100)
    classifiers = []
    treec = 0
    n_features = size(X)[1]
    divamount = n_trees / n_features
    if cuda == true
        Y = CuArray(Y)
    end
    for data in eachcol(X)
        if cuda == true
            data = CuArray(data)
        end
        mdl = RandomForestClassifier(data, Y, n_trees = divamount)
        push!(classifiers, mdl)
    end
    predict(xt) = _compare_predCat(classifiers, xt)
    new{typeof(predict)}(predict, result)
end
end

The issue I am facing is that when this constructor is called with the Array type, everything works as it should. However, whenever I try to use it with the DataFrame type, I always seem to get a methoderror. I even tried changing the type to the type that Julia was saying I was passing (I was passing a DataFrame, as proven with typeof()) and when I try that, the method error just changes into saying no method matching and then some other obscure type. It is weird to me that typeof() tells me it is of DataFrame type, but then I get
" closest candidates are RandomForestClassifier(::Array, ::Array) or RandomForestClassifier(::DataFrame, ::Array).
Is this a bug? It seems like DataFrames has been acting a bit weird since 0.24, the columns seem to be stored in some sort of PooledDataArray instead now, anyway… Which I am sure is a sub-type of AbstractArray… I am not really sure why it is impossible to pass a DataFrame here.

2

That’s weird. Are you sure your type is a DataFrame and not a SubDataFrame?

I don’t think it’s a dataframes bug. The PooledArray change is performance-related and shouldn’t affect anything here.

3

I think it would be easiest to diagnose if you show us the command you execute and a full stack-trace that Julia produces.

4

Weirdly enough, the DataFrame I was working with was a sub data frame… However typeof() still returned DataFrame, which I find strange. Thank you for the suggestion @pdeffebach .
In order to shed a bit of light, I also have the notebook, but I did end up converting the dataframe into a vector of vectors and writing a new function to iterate them. I think that maybe the issue was generated from the OneHotEncoder type’s predict function return, actually.