Make dataset example self-contained

[ResidentMario]

I've consolidated the example datasets under a geopandas-like geoplot.datasets domain (here).

This has the beneficial effect that it makes all of the examples in the geoplot documentation, especially the ones in the gallery, immediately reproducible for the user. However, the drawback is that I also have to distribute the example data with the library. After hewing and hawing every which way, I've gotten that down to a ~10 MB examples.zip file.

@choldgraf I would like your feedback on this idea. Is a 10 MB add-on like this an acceptable load for such a library? Or should I maybe provide an nltk-like downloader instead?

[choldgraf]

I think you should store the data online someplace stable (maybe figshare) and use the module to download the data to ~/geoplot_data folder when the person requests it. IME that's the best long-term solution!

[ResidentMario]

I asked Reddit this question (here) and Jake VanderPlas actually recommended Quilt, a startup'd data package management tool, in the comments.

I'd heard of it before, but was wary of trusting a startup to continue existing long-term...but they've been around for a little while now, and it's got a VanderPlus thumbs-up, so I've gone ahead and integrated that in. And it works great! Lets me delegate the problem of dealing with file downloads to a dedicated package (quilt) that I don't need to worry about.

[choldgraf]

very interesting! I hadn't heard of that before. Lemme know how it goes!

[ResidentMario]

Went well so far! We'll see if this develops any hiccups.

[pybokeh]

Hello, how do I install the geoplot_data? I installed quilt via pip install quilt. Then when I tried to run the example notebook tutorial and do the import:
from quilt.data.ResidentMario import geoplot_data

It says the module is not found. So I'm assuming I'm missing a step or need to install it somehow?? I tried pip install geoplot_data or pip install geoplot-data, but those packages don't exist. Perhaps can we have the geoplot_data pip-installable too?

[ResidentMario]

There's a CLI command or a Python statement you can run to get the data locally, described here: https://docs.quiltdata.com/use-a-package.html

I'll make this clearer the next time I revise the docs.

[pybokeh]

@ResidentMario Thank you! All I did was run:

import quilt
quilt.install("ResidentMario/geoplot_data")

and was then able to run the example.

[roaringcat]

Hello,I get the same problem and the page above cound not be found.
How can I solve this to get the geoplot_data?
Thanks.

[ResidentMario]

The code snippet pybokeh included in his comment should do the job. I think the new URL is https://docs.quiltdata.com/get-started/step-by-step.

[roaringcat]

Oh I miss the important code above,thank you very much!
I get the geoplot_data finally!

[ResidentMario]

For future reference for anyone visiting this GH issue, the system for getting example data in geoplot has changed again. There is now a geoplot.datasets.get_path method which serves a URL to a specific example dataset from the ResidentMario/geoplot-data repository on GitHub. Now that geopandas has the ability to read URLs, grabbing an example dataset is as easy as:

import geoplot as gplt
import geopandas as gpd

gpd.read_file(gplt.datasets.get_path("world"))

This feature was introduced in geoplot@0.3.0, and is used throughout the updated documentation.

This removes the external dependency on quilt and the managerial overhead that comes with having yet another package manager.