RXLS

Shortcut from Read XLS[X|B]

Reading both XLSX and XLSB files, fast and memory-safe, with Python, into PyArrow.

Description

This module provides one function: read for reading both .xlsx and .xlsb files.

Simple usage showcase:

import polars as pl
import pandas as pd

from rxls.reader import read

polars_df = pl.from_arrow(read(some_file, header=True))
pandas_df = read(some_file, header=True).to_pandas()

Advanced usage examples.

Some file has no header:

from rxls.reader import read

table = read(some_file, header=0)  # produce `Unnamed: 0` ... `Unnamed: N` columns
table = read(some_file, header=['a', 'b', 'c'])  # produce table with columns `a`, `b`, `c`, and raise an exception, when column count != 3.

Header is placed in unknown row (but we know, it is in top-30 and one cell of it contains word timestamp)

from rxls.reader import read

table = read(some_file, header=True, lookup_head='^timestamp$')  # First row of header must contain cell with word `timestamp`

Some rows in column timestamp contains unwanted cells (with subscripts, totals, or something else), but column row_id doesn't:

from rxls.reader import read

table = read(some_file, header=True, row_filters='^row_id$')  # After `header`, will be only rows, that contains non-null value in column `row_id`

Some rows in column timestamp contains unwanted cells, column row_id doesn't, but we will ensure, that table has also non-null column client:

from rxls.reader import read

table = read(some_file, header=True, row_filters=['^row_id$', '^client$'])  # After `header`, will be only rows, that contains non-null value in columns `row_id` AND `client`

Some rows in a sheet contains unwanted cells, but we know, that row_id column cells are not null, or client column cells are not null either:

from rxls.reader import read

table = read(some_file, header=True, row_filters=['^row_id$', '^client$'], row_filters_strategy='or')  # After `header`, will be only rows, that contains non-null value in columns `row_id` OR `client`

For tracking rows events:

from rxls.reader import read
from tqdm import tqdm

with tqdm(desc='Reading some file', unit=' rows') as tq:
    table = read(some_file, header=True, row_filters=['^row_id$', '^client$'], row_filters_strategy='or', row_callback=tq.update)

Some algorithm explanations:

RXLS uses only TWO datatypes for cells of excel files: NUMERIC and STRING. It is because all other datatypes, as I discovered, are just styles, applied to them (named representation in RXLS).

So, when MS Excel show us a date (or time, or timestamp, or duration interval), it's actually a floating-point number "under the hood". This number, when is between [0.0, 1.0), presents part of day (0.5 = 12 hours, 0.125 = 3 hours and vice versa), which useful for time and duration datatypes, and, when bigger or equals to 1, presents days since 1900 with part of day. For date - decimals will be zero. All temporal cells (date/time, datetime, timedelta) will be converted to timestamp[ms] during prepare step. This behaviour may be overriden with dtypes argument - after all, pyarrow's timestamp[ms] datatype may be convert to date64 or time32['ms'] instantly and without any problems. duration datatype in Excel files, usually, not presented, and pyarrow cannot cast timestamp['ms'] to duration['ms']. For such conversion, you can extract timestamp column and convert it as:

import pyarrow as pa

column_name = 'duration_column'

table = read(some_file, header=True)

table.set_column(
    next(i for i, x in enumerate(table.column_names) if x == column_name),
    pa.field(column_name, pa.duration('ms')),
    table[column_name].combine_chunks().view(pa.duration('ms'))  # original dtype is pyarrow.timestamp['ms'], which is binary equivalent for pyarrow.duration['ms']
)

Strings most common representation is 4-byte little-endian integer (in xlsb) or some number (in xlsx). This number is an index of shared string in special part of Excel file (xl/sharedStrings.[xml|bin]). This special part will be scanned on each read call, before all other steps.

Keeping all this in mind, I've implemented class chunk for keeping original data as-is, until it should be accessed during final table creation. Chunks, actually, are column parts, and contains non-null values with same type and representation. Chunk may be of NULL type, but it contains just count of null values between not-null chunks.

Original data will be contained inside chunk as-is, intact until prepare step:

• numpy.NDArray[numpy.float64] - simple numeric values (with optional temporal flag)
• numpy.NDArray[numpy.uint32] - for XLSB RkNumber-formatted floating-poing or integer values.
• pyarrow.LargeStringArray - for XLSX and XLSB strings, that are not in shared, but presented as-is.
• pyarrow.UInt64Array - for XLSX and XLSB shared strings indices.
• int - for null chunks: count of null values

RXLS can skip entire chunks (or their parts) before prepare step, when they should be skipped (see lookup_head and row_filters arguments descriptions) - they will never be accessed afterwards.

RXLS performs two main steps for a sheet of Excel file: reading and prepare.

On reading step, no computations will be performed - it's just filling xl_series objects by chunks, keeping original data.

On prepare step, unwanted chunks will be dropped, and others will be prepared as:

• numpy.NDArray[numpy.uint32] -> numpy.NDArray[numpy.float64] - when numeric chunk has rknubmer flag.
• numpy.NDArray[numpy.float64] -> numpy.NDArray[numpy.int64] - when numeric chunk has temporal flag. count of days with decimal part since 1900 (Windows) -> milliseconds since 1970-01-01 (UNIX timestamp)
• pyarrow.UInt64Array -> pyarrow.LargeStringArray - shared strings indices to actual data from shared.
• int -> pyarrow.NullArray or pyarrow.Array[T, pyarrow.Scalar[T]] if column has chunks of another common datatype T.

These operations were totally optimized (and may performs much faster with numba along with (or without) tbb - see Dependencies section).

Also, about lookup_head and header with height > 1.

If header has more than 1 row, every column will fill it's topmost empty cells by use corresponding non-empty cell values from left neighbour. All other cells will be leave as is. After this, non-empty cells will be concatenated from top to down with ', ' separator. These operations performs for each column from left to right.

So, RXLS features are:

• Lazy and fast column-wise computations
• Smart header searching and row filtering
• Keeping datatypes and resolve conflicts.

Notes:

• At the moment, RXLS just skip empty column (which has no header, nor any data).

Parameters:

• Positional only:
  • file: path to the file, or BytesIO with file.
  • sheet: index or name of sheet for reading (default: 0)
• Positional:
  • header:
    • bool: True when header is presented in the sheet and have one row height
    • int: 0 when no header is presented in the sheet, N for header of N rows height.
    • list[str]: when no header is presented, but we are know, what it should be.
• Keyword-only
  • dtypes: Specify datatypes for columns.
    • Sequence[pyarrow.DataType]: when we know dtype for each non-empty column.
    • dict[str, pyarrow.DataType]: when we will override dtype for some columns.
    • pyarrow.DataType: when all columns must be of this dtype.
    • None: for original dtypes of columns.
  • skip_cols: Skip some columns by their 0-based indices (A == 0). Performs on reading step.
  • skip_rows: Skip some rows on the top of the file. Performs on reading step.
  • skip_rows_after_header: Skip some rows after header. Performs on prepare step.
  • take_rows: Stop reading after this row (0-based). Performs on reading step.
  • take_rows_non_empty: Leave empty rows in resulting table. Performs on reading step.
  • lookup_head: Regular expression for smart-search of the first row of header, or column index, where first non-empty cell is the top-level cell of header.
  • lookup_size: Count of rows to perform lookup when searching for header. Note: RXLS will raise an exception, if lookup_head with this lookup_size is failed.
  • row_filters: Regular expression(s) for columns, which content determines empty and non-empty rows.
  • row_filters_strategy: Boolean operator(s) for situations with two or more columns in row_filters.
  • float_precision. All numeric values in MS Excel are floating-point under the hood, so, when rounding whole float64 column to this precision gives equal result to just truncate decimals, this column will be converted to int64.
  • datetime_formats: One or more formats, which may appears in columns with conflicts.
  • conflict_resolve: When column contains two or more datatypes, this is a conflict. When conflict cannot be resolved, whole column will be convert to utf-8. Conflicts may be resolved as:
    • no: All parts in columns with conflicts will be convert to utf8.
    • temporal: Try to convert non-temporal parts of column with some temporal parts to temporal (float64 -> timestamp and utf8 -> timestamp (using default formats (ISO 8601), or as specified in datetime_formats)
    • numeric: Try to convert non-numeric parts of column with some numeric parts to numeric (utf8 -> float64).
    • all: Use both strategies to resolve conflicts. When some parts of column is temporal, try to convert all other parts to temporal (also enable two-step string converting: utf8 -> float64 -> timestamp)
  • utf8_type_infers: (WIP) When resulting column is utf-8 and all non-null cells of it passes regular expression of numeric values, convert it to float64 (and, maybe, to int64 after).
  • null_values: Advanced list of values, that should be skipped on reading step (or callable predicate for them).
  • row_callback: Any callable, which may be called without arguments on each row event. Useful for progress tracking.

Dependencies

Required:

• pyarrow>=14.0.2
• numpy>=1.24.4
• recordclass>=0.21.1
• typing_extensions>=4.9.0

Optional:

• numba>=0.58.1 (increase import time, but reading speed also increases x3/x4 and up)
• tbb>=2021.11.0 (only for numba - additional performance gain)
• polars>=0.20.4 (if needs to parse timestamps with milliseconds/microseconds/nanoseconds or AM/PM with timezone)
• pandas>=2.0.3 (for pyarrow to_pandas functionality)
• tqdm>=4.66.1 (fast progress tracking)