scverse / scverse/spatialdata

Check for uniqueness of names also across the file storage

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I/O 💿
Dominant language
Python
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Avg merge
4d 3h
Merged PRs (30d)
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Description

TLDR;

When #398 is addressed, we can remove _check_element_not_on_disk_with_different_type() as it will not be needed anymore.

Full issue

When adding an element in-memory to a SpatialData object, the mechanism around self._shared_keys in Elements doesn't check (by design) if an on-disk an element with the same name is already available. This gives the user more flexibility when replacing an element on-disk with a new one in-memory.

Nevertheless, due the fact that we assume unique names for objects of different types, the above in-memory check doesn't guarantee that with the new incremental IO APIs the user doesn't add on-disk an element that is already present with the same name in another group. For instance on disk there would be images/my_image, the user could have in-memory only labels/my_image and save it on disk. This would make the object corrupted.

Currently I perform the check that the element name that is being added/deleted/changed (metadata, transformations) doesn't refer to an element on-disk with a different type with _check_element_not_on_disk_with_different_type(). Anyway, in general I believe that we should not complicate the code with these checks and address the problem at the root by fixing https://github.com/scverse/spatialdata/issues/398.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by reading issue #398, then inspect the Elements mechanism around self._shared_keys and _check_element_not_on_disk_with_different_type(). The work is done when incremental IO prevents duplicate names across on-disk groups and the obsolete type-check helper can be removed.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
python
Domain
data, databases
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

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