Paul Balanca created ARROW-8131:
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Summary: Add dynamic attributes to PyArrow ExtensionArray
Key: ARROW-8131
URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/ARROW-8131
Project: Apache Arrow
Issue Type: Improvement
Components: Python
Affects Versions: 0.16.0
Environment: Ubuntu 19.10 + Python 3.7
Reporter: Paul Balanca
In the present implementation, the interface of the class `ExtensionArray` is
not extendable by user. One can not easily inherit from it, as the constructor
__init__ can not be called directly, or it does not allow adding dynamically
atttributes.
Keeping the current design with build methods `from_*`, I believe it could then
make sense to allow dynamic attributes in `ExtensionArray` (see
[https://cython.readthedocs.io/en/latest/src/userguide/extension_types.html#dynamic-attributes]).
The runtime & size cost of the Python objects would be fairly minimal,
compared to increased flexibility it would allow.
A typical use case where it could be useful would be dynamic mixins (added by
custom Factory), allowing projects based on PyArrow to extend (! :)) the
interface with specific business logic.
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