issues: 1383037028

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id node_id number title user state locked assignee milestone comments created_at updated_at closed_at author_association active_lock_reason draft pull_request body reactions performed_via_github_app state_reason repo type
1383037028 I_kwDOAMm_X85Sb3hk 7071 Should Xarray have a read_csv method? 2443309 open 0     5 2022-09-22T21:28:46Z 2023-06-13T01:45:33Z   MEMBER      

Is your feature request related to a problem?

Most users of Xarray/Pandas start with an IO call of some sort. In Xarray, our open_dataset(..., engine=engine) interface provides an extensible interface to more complex backends (NetCDF, Zarr, GRIB, etc.). For tabular data types, we have traditionally pointed users to Pandas. While this works for users that are comfortable with Pandas, it is an added hurdle to users getting started with Xarray.

Describe the solution you'd like

It should be easy and obvious how a user can get a CSV (or other tabular data) into Xarray. Ideally, we don't force the user to use a third part library.

Describe alternatives you've considered

I can think of three possible solutions:

  1. We expose a new function read_csv, it may do something like this:

python def read_csv(filepath_or_buffer, **kwargs): df = pd.read_csv(filepath_or_buffer, **kwargs) ds = xr.Dataset.from_dataframe(df) return ds

  1. We develop a storage backend to support reading CSV-like data:

python ds = open_dataset(filepath, engine='csv')

  1. We copy (1) as an example and put it in Xarray's documentation. Explicitly showing how you would use Pandas to produce a Dataset from a CSV.
 
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