apache / apache/arrow-js

[JS] Documentation is quite obscure and not useful

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#93 7 comments 5 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub
Type: enhancement
Dominant language
TypeScript
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Description

I've been looking forward to using Apache Arrow as a data storage component in a frontend application that heavily relies on time series data. However, the syntax seems to have changed quite a lot with version **7.0.0**. Most of the examples on https://observablehq.com seem to be outdated because of that.

The two main resources https://arrow.apache.org/docs/js/index.html and https://arrow.apache.org/docs/js/modules/Arrow_dom.html are quite insufficient to understand how to use the project. There are a bunch of examples on how to create a table and a vector. However, it seems that the most important use case in JS is not captured - how to create a table from an array of records
```javascript

[{a:1, b:2}, {a:3, b:4}]
```
or how to create a table from an observable that provides one record at a time.
```javascript

callback(record => ???)
```
No information on how to append data to a table (except the _concat()_ method).

No information on how to manipulate the data in a table or an example on how to consume it beyond the fact that a table is an iterable and has a _get()_ method.

Please, it will be also quite helpful to add some examples on how to work with time series data.

Current state of the documentation does not provide the ability for the project to be adopted by anyone else except the core developers.

**Environment**: Linux, Deno, DOM
**Reporter**: [Teodor Kostov](https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/ARROW-16039)
#### Related issues:
- [[JS] Consider implementing a tableFromArray](https://github.com/apache/arrow/issues/31560) (is a parent of)
- [[JS] Make the docs more user friendly](https://github.com/apache/arrow/issues/28295) (is duplicated by)

**Note**: *This issue was originally created as [ARROW-16039](https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/ARROW-16039). Please see the [migration documentation](https://github.com/apache/arrow/issues/14542) for further details.*

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