Allow accessing ColumnArrays backing column#500
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When working with a ColumnArray, it is oftentimes useful to be able to access the entire, contiguous backing array at once without having to do row-wise access. This change simply allows reading access to the backing data array and the offsets.
slabko
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May 27, 2026
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slabko
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Hi @IyeOnline, please take a look at my notes.
I appreciate your PR, but when tests are missing, I eventually need to implement them myself, or I may end up postponing the PR until I have time to do so. I try to avoid accepting changes that are not covered by tests.
Please remember to add tests for the related changes.
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| ColumnRef ColumnArray::GetData() { | ||
| ColumnRef ColumnArray::GetData() const { |
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The reason GetData was marked non-const is that it exposes internal state that can then be modified. I do not think marking this function const is a good idea.
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| const std::shared_ptr<ColumnUInt64>& ColumnArray::GetOffsets() const { |
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Similar to GetData, logically this is not a const function.
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When working with a ColumnArray, it is oftentimes useful to be able to
access the entire, contiguous backing array at once without having to do
row-wise access.
This change simply allows reading access to the backing data array and
the offsets.
In my concrete usecase I want to fetch data from clickhouse and put it into our columnar (Apache Arrow) data representation.
Doing this recursively and efficiently gets much easier with this access.
Given that e.g. ColumnVector directly exposes writable access to its backing
std::vectorand ColumnArray itself is brittleagainst modifcation of passed-in columns, I dont see a downside with making this API public.