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Introduction

DSFF (DataSet File Format) is a tiny library relying on openpyxl that allows to store a dataset with its features for use with machine learning in an XSLX file whose structure is enforced. It is intended to make easy to store, edit and exchange a dataset.

It is used with the Packing Box to export datasets in a convenient format.

Setup

This library is available on PyPi and can be simply installed using Pip:

pip install --user dsff

Format

DSFF is straightforward and contains only the minimum for storing a dataset.

The following document properties of the XSLX format are used:

  • title: this holds the name of the dataset
  • description: this holds a serialized dictionary of the metadata from the dataset

An XSLX workbook format as a DSFF has two and only two worksheets:

  1. data: the matrix of the whole dataset (including headers), eventually containing samples' metadata but mostly the feature values
  2. features: the name-description pairs of each feature used in data (including two headers: name and description)