Contents

1 Overview

The alabaster.matrix package implements methods to save matrix-like objects to file artifacts and load them back into R. Check out the alabaster.base for more details on the motivation and the alabaster framework.

2 Quick start

Given an array-like object, we can use stageObject() to save it inside a staging directory:

library(Matrix)
y <- rsparsematrix(1000, 100, density=0.05)

library(alabaster.matrix)
tmp <- tempfile()
dir.create(tmp)
meta <- stageObject(y, tmp, "my_sparse_matrix")

library(alabaster.base)
.writeMetadata(meta, tmp)
## $type
## [1] "local"
## 
## $path
## [1] "my_sparse_matrix/matrix.h5"
list.files(tmp, recursive=TRUE)
## [1] "my_sparse_matrix/matrix.h5"      "my_sparse_matrix/matrix.h5.json"

We then load it back into our R session with loadObject(). This creates a HDF5-backed DelayedArray that can be easily coerced into the desired format, e.g., a dgCMatrix.

meta <- acquireMetadata(tmp, "my_sparse_matrix/matrix.h5")
roundtrip <- loadObject(meta, tmp)
class(roundtrip)
## [1] "H5SparseMatrix"
## attr(,"package")
## [1] "HDF5Array"

This process is supported for all base arrays, Matrix objects and DelayedArray objects.

3 Saving delayed operations

For DelayedArrays, we may instead choose to save the delayed operations themselves to file, using the chihaya package. This creates a HDF5 file following the chihaya format, containing the delayed operations rather than the results of their evaluation.

library(DelayedArray)
y <- DelayedArray(rsparsematrix(1000, 100, 0.05))
y <- log1p(abs(y) / 1:100) # adding some delayed ops.

preserveDelayedOperations(TRUE)
meta <- stageObject(y, tmp, "delayed")
.writeMetadata(meta, tmp)
## $type
## [1] "local"
## 
## $path
## [1] "delayed/delayed.h5"
meta <- acquireMetadata(tmp, "delayed/delayed.h5")
roundtrip <- loadObject(meta, tmp)
class(roundtrip)
## [1] "DelayedMatrix"
## attr(,"package")
## [1] "DelayedArray"

However, it is probably best to avoid preserving delayed operations for file-backed DelayedArrays if you want the artifacts to be re-usable on different filesystems. For example, HDF5Arrays will be saved with a reference to an absolute file path, which will not be portable.

Session information

sessionInfo()
## R version 4.3.0 RC (2023-04-18 r84287 ucrt)
## Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32/x64 (64-bit)
## Running under: Windows Server 2022 x64 (build 20348)
## 
## Matrix products: default
## 
## 
## locale:
## [1] LC_COLLATE=C                          
## [2] LC_CTYPE=English_United States.utf8   
## [3] LC_MONETARY=English_United States.utf8
## [4] LC_NUMERIC=C                          
## [5] LC_TIME=English_United States.utf8    
## 
## time zone: America/New_York
## tzcode source: internal
## 
## attached base packages:
## [1] stats4    stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods  
## [8] base     
## 
## other attached packages:
##  [1] DelayedArray_0.27.2    SparseArray_1.1.2      S4Arrays_1.1.2        
##  [4] IRanges_2.35.1         S4Vectors_0.39.1       MatrixGenerics_1.13.0 
##  [7] matrixStats_0.63.0     BiocGenerics_0.47.0    alabaster.base_1.1.0  
## [10] alabaster.matrix_1.1.2 Matrix_1.5-4           BiocStyle_2.29.0      
## 
## loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
##  [1] jsonlite_1.8.4          compiler_4.3.0          BiocManager_1.30.20    
##  [4] crayon_1.5.2            Rcpp_1.0.10             rhdf5filters_1.13.2    
##  [7] jquerylib_0.1.4         yaml_2.3.7              fastmap_1.1.1          
## [10] lattice_0.21-8          jsonvalidate_1.3.2      R6_2.5.1               
## [13] XVector_0.41.1          curl_5.0.0              knitr_1.42             
## [16] chihaya_1.1.0           bookdown_0.34           bslib_0.4.2            
## [19] rlang_1.1.1             V8_4.3.0                cachem_1.0.8           
## [22] HDF5Array_1.29.3        xfun_0.39               sass_0.4.6             
## [25] cli_3.6.1               Rhdf5lib_1.23.0         zlibbioc_1.47.0        
## [28] digest_0.6.31           grid_4.3.0              alabaster.schemas_1.1.1
## [31] rhdf5_2.45.0            evaluate_0.21           rmarkdown_2.21         
## [34] tools_4.3.0             htmltools_0.5.5