Polars

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Blazingly fast DataFrames in Rust, Python & Node.js

Polars is a blazingly fast DataFrames library implemented in Rust using Apache Arrow Columnar Format as the memory model.

Lazy | eager execution
Multi-threaded
SIMD
Query optimization
Powerful expression API
Rust | Python | ...

To learn more, read the User Guide.

>>> import polars as pl
>>> df = pl.DataFrame(
...     {
...         "A": [1, 2, 3, 4, 5],
...         "fruits": ["banana", "banana", "apple", "apple", "banana"],
...         "B": [5, 4, 3, 2, 1],
...         "cars": ["beetle", "audi", "beetle", "beetle", "beetle"],
...     }
... )

# embarrassingly parallel execution
# very expressive query language
>>> (
...     df
...     .sort("fruits")
...     .select(
...         [
...             "fruits",
...             "cars",
...             pl.lit("fruits").alias("literal_string_fruits"),
...             pl.col("B").filter(pl.col("cars") == "beetle").sum(),
...             pl.col("A").filter(pl.col("B") > 2).sum().over("cars").alias("sum_A_by_cars"),     # groups by "cars"
...             pl.col("A").sum().over("fruits").alias("sum_A_by_fruits"),                         # groups by "fruits"
...             pl.col("A").reverse().over("fruits").alias("rev_A_by_fruits"),                     # groups by "fruits
...             pl.col("A").sort_by("B").over("fruits").alias("sort_A_by_B_by_fruits"),            # groups by "fruits"
...         ]
...     )
... )
shape: (5, 8)
┌──────────┬──────────┬──────────────┬─────┬─────────────┬─────────────┬─────────────┬─────────────┐
│ fruits   ┆ cars     ┆ literal_stri ┆ B   ┆ sum_A_by_ca ┆ sum_A_by_fr ┆ rev_A_by_fr ┆ sort_A_by_B │
│ ---      ┆ ---      ┆ ng_fruits    ┆ --- ┆ rs          ┆ uits        ┆ uits        ┆ _by_fruits  │
│ str      ┆ str      ┆ ---          ┆ i64 ┆ ---         ┆ ---         ┆ ---         ┆ ---         │
│          ┆          ┆ str          ┆     ┆ i64         ┆ i64         ┆ i64         ┆ i64         │
╞══════════╪══════════╪══════════════╪═════╪═════════════╪═════════════╪═════════════╪═════════════╡
│ "apple"  ┆ "beetle" ┆ "fruits"     ┆ 11  ┆ 4           ┆ 7           ┆ 4           ┆ 4           │
├╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌┼╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌┼╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌┼╌╌╌╌╌┼╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌┼╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌┼╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌┼╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌┤
│ "apple"  ┆ "beetle" ┆ "fruits"     ┆ 11  ┆ 4           ┆ 7           ┆ 3           ┆ 3           │
├╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌┼╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌┼╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌┼╌╌╌╌╌┼╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌┼╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌┼╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌┼╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌┤
│ "banana" ┆ "beetle" ┆ "fruits"     ┆ 11  ┆ 4           ┆ 8           ┆ 5           ┆ 5           │
├╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌┼╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌┼╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌┼╌╌╌╌╌┼╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌┼╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌┼╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌┼╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌┤
│ "banana" ┆ "audi"   ┆ "fruits"     ┆ 11  ┆ 2           ┆ 8           ┆ 2           ┆ 2           │
├╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌┼╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌┼╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌┼╌╌╌╌╌┼╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌┼╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌┼╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌┼╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌┤
│ "banana" ┆ "beetle" ┆ "fruits"     ┆ 11  ┆ 4           ┆ 8           ┆ 1           ┆ 1           │
└──────────┴──────────┴──────────────┴─────┴─────────────┴─────────────┴─────────────┴─────────────┘

Performance 🚀🚀

Polars is very fast. In fact, it is one of the best performing solutions available. See the results in h2oai's db-benchmark.

Python setup

Install the latest polars version with:

# Install Polars only.
$ pip3 install -U 'polars'

# Install Polars with all optional dependencies.
$ pip3 install -U 'polars[all]'

# Install Polars and numpy.
$ pip3 install -U 'polars[numpy]'

# Install Polars and pyarrow/pandas/numpy to be able to convert to/from pandas and/or read data with pyarrow.
$ pip3 install -U 'polars[pyarrow]'

# Install Polars and pyarrow/pandas/numpy and fsspec (read from e.g. remote filesystems, compressed files).
$ pip3 install -U 'polars[pyarrow,fsspec]'

# Install Polars and connectorx (read data from SQL databases).
$ pip3 install -U 'polars[connectorx]'

# Install Polars and xlsx2csv (read data from Excel).
$ pip3 install -U 'polars[xlsx2csv]'

# Install Polars with timezone support, only needed if
#   1. you are on Python < 3.9, Python 3.9+ has this in stdlib
#   2. you are on Windows
$ pip3 install -U 'polars[timezone]'

Releases happen quite often (weekly / every few days) at the moment, so updating polars regularly to get the latest bugfixes / features might not be a bad idea.

Rust setup

You can take latest release from crates.io, or if you want to use the latest features / performance improvements point to the master branch of this repo.

polars = { git = "https://github.com/pola-rs/polars", rev = "<optional git tag>" }

Rust version

Required Rust version >=1.58

Documentation

Want to know about all the features Polars supports? Read the docs!

Python

Installation guide: $ pip3 install polars
Python documentation
User guide

Rust

Node

Installation guide: $ yarn add nodejs-polars
Node documentation
User guide
Github

Contribution

Want to contribute? Read our contribution guideline.

[Python]: compile polars from source

If you want a bleeding edge release or maximal performance you should compile polars from source.

This can be done by going through the following steps in sequence:

Install the latest Rust compiler
Install maturin: $ pip3 install maturin

Choose any of:

Fastest binary, very long compile times:

$ cd py-polars && maturin develop --release -- -C target-cpu=native

Fast binary, Shorter compile times:

$ cd py-polars && maturin develop --release -- -C codegen-units=16 -C lto=thin -C target-cpu=native

Note that the Rust crate implementing the Python bindings is called py-polars to distinguish from the wrapped Rust crate polars itself. However, both the Python package and the Python module are named polars, so you can pip install polars and import polars.

Arrow2

Polars has transitioned to arrow2. Arrow2 is a faster and safer implementation of the Apache Arrow Columnar Format. Arrow2 also has a more granular code base, helping to reduce the compiler bloat.

Use custom Rust function in python?

See this example.

Going big...

Do you expect more than 2^32 ~4,2 billion rows? Compile polars with the bigidx feature flag.

Or for python users install $ pip install -U polars-u64-idx.

Don't use this unless you hit the row boundary as the default polars is faster and consumes less memory.

Legacy

Do you want polars to run on an old CPU (e.g. dating from before 2011)? Install $pip -U polars-lts-cpu. This polars project is compiled without avx target features.

Acknowledgements

Development of Polars is proudly powered by

thomasaarholt/polars