Spyder: Add Sparse Matrix support in the Variable Explorer

[kailaix]

Hi,

I think it might be very helpful if the variable explorer can show the sparse matrix. Right now only ndarray are supported. Along with it there could be a spy option in the menu.

Optional: maybe a convert to ndarray and convert to sparse can be added in the corresponding variable menu.

Thanks for the consideration.

[kailaix]

I would like to share my temporary solution. But this should be considered as a "solution" to it.(my spyder version 3.2.1)

1. I cheated spyder by adding a faked supported type in the function is_supported of file widgets/variableexplorer/utils.py

def is_supported(value, check_all=False, filters=None, iterate=True):
    """Return True if the value is supported, False otherwise"""
    import scipy.sparse as sps
    if isinstance(value, sps.spmatrix):
        return True
   # ...

1. add two lines to value_to_display function in the same file

elif isinstance(value, scipy.sparse.spmatrix):
            display = 'nnz: %i, Min: %r\n Max: %r' %(value.nnz, value.min(), value.max())

and in get_size

elif isinstance(item, (ndarray, MaskedArray, scipy.sparse.spmatrix)):
        return item.shape

1. modify imshow method in namespacebrowser.py

def imshow(self, name):
        sw = self.shellwidget
        import scipy
        try:
            sw.execute("%%varexp --spy %s" % name)
        except:
            if sw._reading:
                sw.dbg_exec_magic('varexp', '--imshow %s' % name)
            else:
                sw.execute("%%varexp --imshow %s" % name)

1. Finally, I add a silly line of code into refresh_plot_entries functions in the collections editor

else:
            is_array = condition_plot = condition_imshow = is_list \
                     = condition_hist = False
condition_imshow = True # my code here
self.plot_action.setVisible(condition_plot or is_list)

This gives me the desired feature I want.

[dalthviz]

Hi @kailaix thanks for sharing your solution!, if you want maybe you could create a PR with this changes and then we could give you some comments on the code. @ccordoba12 @goanpeca @jitseniesen , what do you guys think?

[goanpeca]

Sure, go for it :-)

[ccordoba12]

+1 from me too. @kailaix, please go for it!

Our only requirement is to make this against our master branch because Spyder 3.2 is now in maintenance, so we don't accept new features for it.