Re: [PATCH] Expanded ob-python results handling and plotting

[Jack Kamm]

After letting it sit, I'm not sure that my patch above is a good idea
anymore. While it would be useful, it also adds substantial complexity
to ob-python.

For now, I think I prefer to keep ob-python leaner, so am going to hold
off on this.

An alternative approach is to have the user handle graphics and
dataframes via noweb or header arguments.

I've added a couple examples on worg, demonstrating how to use noweb
to insert boilerplate code for handling matplotlib figures and pandas
dataframes [0,1].

Additionally, I'm attaching a small patch to make it easier to handle
graphics/dataframes via the :return header argument, as an alternative
to noweb. The patch includes a couple examples in ORG-NEWS
illustrating this.

I'll wait a week or so for comments before merging this new, more
limited patch into master.

[0] https://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/languages/ob-doc-python.html
[1] worg commit 59e320ad

Cheers,
Jack

>From 118d8b5eb817e9a21e9d84f2f942fcc841ddc51f Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Jack Kamm <jackkamm@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 19 Sep 2020 08:44:30 -0700
Subject: [PATCH] ob-python: Improvements to :return header argument

* lisp/ob-python.el (org-babel-execute:python): Allow return-val to be
non-nil in sessions, and concatenate it after the expanded body.
---
 etc/ORG-NEWS      | 53 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 lisp/ob-python.el | 11 ++++++----
 2 files changed, 60 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)

diff --git a/etc/ORG-NEWS b/etc/ORG-NEWS
index 0ed626fb7..50a455ad5 100644
--- a/etc/ORG-NEWS
+++ b/etc/ORG-NEWS
@@ -11,6 +11,59 @@ See the end of the file for license conditions.
 Please send Org bug reports to mailto:emacs-orgmode@gnu.org.
 
 * Version 9.5 (not yet released)
+** New features
+*** =ob-python= improvements to =:return= header argument 
+
+The =:return= header argument in =ob-python= now works for session
+blocks as well as non-session blocks.  Also, it now works with the
+=:epilogue= header argument -- previously, setting the =:return=
+header would cause the =:epilogue= to be ignored.
+
+This change allows more easily moving boilerplate out of the main code
+block and into the header. For example, for plotting, we need to add
+boilerplate to save the figure to a file and return the
+filename. Instead of doing this within the code block, we can now
+handle it through the header arguments as follows:
+
+#+BEGIN_SRC org
+,#+header: :var fname="/home/jack/tmp/plot.svg"
+,#+header: :epilogue plt.savefig(fname)
+,#+header: :return fname
+,#+begin_src python :results value file
+  import matplotlib, numpy
+  import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
+  fig=plt.figure(figsize=(4,2))
+  x=numpy.linspace(-15,15)
+  plt.plot(numpy.sin(x)/x)
+  fig.tight_layout()
+,#+end_src
+
+,#+RESULTS:
+[[file:/home/jack/tmp/plot.svg]]
+#+END_SRC
+
+As another example, we can use =:return= with the external 
[[https://pypi.org/project/tabulate/][tabulate]]
+package, to convert pandas Dataframes into orgmode tables:
+
+#+begin_src org
+,#+header: :prologue from tabulate import tabulate
+,#+header: :return tabulate(table, headers=table.columns, tablefmt="orgtbl")
+,#+begin_src python :results value raw :session
+  import pandas as pd
+  table = pd.DataFrame({
+      "a": [1,2,3],
+      "b": [4,5,6]
+  })
+,#+end_src
+
+,#+RESULTS:
+|   | a | b |
+|---+---+---|
+| 0 | 1 | 4 |
+| 1 | 2 | 5 |
+| 2 | 3 | 6 |
+#+end_src
+
 * Version 9.4
 ** Incompatible changes
 *** Possibly broken internal file links: please check and fix
diff --git a/lisp/ob-python.el b/lisp/ob-python.el
index 00a7c1a2d..785b9191b 100644
--- a/lisp/ob-python.el
+++ b/lisp/ob-python.el
@@ -81,13 +81,16 @@ (defun org-babel-execute:python (body params)
                   (cdr (assq :session params))))
          (result-params (cdr (assq :result-params params)))
          (result-type (cdr (assq :result-type params)))
-        (return-val (when (and (eq result-type 'value) (not session))
+        (return-val (when (eq result-type 'value)
                       (cdr (assq :return params))))
         (preamble (cdr (assq :preamble params)))
          (full-body
-         (org-babel-expand-body:generic
-          (concat body (if return-val (format "\nreturn %s" return-val) ""))
-          params (org-babel-variable-assignments:python params)))
+         (concat
+          (org-babel-expand-body:generic
+           body params
+           (org-babel-variable-assignments:python params))
+          (when return-val
+            (format (if session "\n%s" "\nreturn %s") return-val))))
          (result (org-babel-python-evaluate
                  session full-body result-type result-params preamble)))
     (org-babel-reassemble-table
-- 
2.28.0