Polars Plugins Cookiecutter

Easily get started with Polars Plugins - get the boilerplate out of the way and start coding!

Usage

First of all, make sure you have cookiecutter installed - see here for how to do that.

Then, suppose you want to create a Polars Plugin called "minimal-plugin". Let's also suppose your name is "Maja Anima".

This is how you would do that:

Install Rust

In your home directory (or wherever you store your projects), run

cookiecutter https://github.com/MarcoGorelli/cookiecutter-polars-plugins.git

When prompted, enter the following:

[1/3] plugin_name (My Plugin): Minimal Plugin
[2/3] project_slug (minimal_plugin):
[3/3] author (anonymous): Maja Anima

Navigate to the directory you just created. For example, if you named your plugin "Minimal Plugin", you would do
```
cd minimal_plugin
```
Create and activate a new Python 3.8+ virtual environment and install Polars and Maturin. If you're new to this, here's one way that we recommend:
1. Install uv: https://github.com/astral-sh/uv?tab=readme-ov-file#getting-started
2. Install some version of Python greater than Python3.8. For example, to install Python3.11:
```
uv python install 3.11
```
3. Create a virtual environment:
```
uv venv -p python3.11
```
4. Activate your virtual environment:
```
# On macOS and Linux.
source .venv/bin/activate

# On Windows.
.venv\Scripts\activate
```
5. Install Polars and Maturin:
```
uv pip install -U polars maturin pip
```
Start compiling the Rust code! This may take a few minutes the first time you do it, but subsequent runs will be fast:
```
maturin develop  # or, if you're benchmarking, maturin develop --release
```

Try running

python run.py

If you see

shape: (5, 2)
┌─────────┬───────────┐
│ english ┆ pig_latin │
│ ---     ┆ ---       │
│ str     ┆ str       │
╞═════════╪═══════════╡
│ this    ┆ histay    │
│ is      ┆ siay      │
│ not     ┆ otnay     │
│ pig     ┆ igpay     │
│ latin   ┆ atinlay   │
└─────────┴───────────┘

then it means everything worked correctly! If not, please open an issue, happy to help debug.

Now, writing your plugin is a different story...please go to https://marcogorelli.github.io/polars-plugins-tutorial/ for a tutorial on how to get started.