Hi Christian, As far as I know no-one is working on a canonical text representation for schemas. A JSON serializer exists for integration test purposes, but IMO it shouldn't be relied upon as canonical.
It looks like Flatbuffers supports serialization to/from JSON [1 <https://google.github.io/flatbuffers/flatbuffers_guide_use_cpp.html>], using that functionality might be a promising avenue to pursue for a human readable schema. I could see adding a helper method someplace under IPC for this. Would that meet your needs? I think if there are other requirements, then a proposal would be welcome. Ideally, a solution would not require additional build/runtime dependencies. Thanks, Micah [1] See Text & schema parsing https://google.github.io/flatbuffers/flatbuffers_guide_use_cpp.html On Fri, Dec 6, 2019 at 1:26 PM Christian Hudon <chr...@elementai.com> wrote: > Hi, > > For the uses I would like to make of Arrow, I would need a human-readable > and -writable version of an Arrow Schema, that could be converted to and > from the Arrow Schema C++ object. Going through the doc for 0.15.1, I don't > see anything to that effect, with the closest being the ToString() method > on DataType instances, but which is meant for debugging only. (I need an > expression of an Arrow Schema that people can read, and that can live > outside of the code for a particular operation.) > > Is a text representation of an Arrow Schema something that is being worked > on now? If not, would you folks be interested in me putting up an initial > proposal for discussion? Any design constraints I should pay attention to, > then? > > Thanks, > > Christian > -- > > > │ Christian Hudon > > │ Applied Research Scientist > > Element AI, 6650 Saint-Urbain #500 > > Montréal, QC, H2S 3G9, Canada > Elementai.com >
