# (Geo)Arrow IPC File Format / Stream

New in version 3.5.

Driver short name

Arrow

Build dependencies

Apache Arrow C++ library

The Arrow IPC File Format (Feather) is a portable file format for storing Arrow tables or data frames (from languages like Python or R) that utilizes the Arrow IPC format internally.

The driver supports the 2 variants of the format:

- File or Random Access format, also known as Feather: for serializing a fixed number of record batches. Random access is required to read such files, but they can be generated using a streaming-only capable file. The recommended extension for such file is `.arrow`

- Streaming IPC format: for sending an arbitrary length sequence of record batches. The format must generally be processed from start to end, and does not require random access. That format is not generally materialized as a file. If it is, the recommended extension is `.arrows` (with a trailing s). But the driver can support regular files as well as the /vsistdin/ and /vsistdout/ streaming files. On opening, it might difficult for the driver to detect that the content is specifically a Arrow IPC stream, especially if the extension is not `.arrows`, and the metadata section is large. Prefixing the filename with `ARROW_IPC_STREAM:` (e.g "ARROW_IPC_STREAM:/vsistdin/") will cause the driver to unconditionally open the file as a streaming IPC format.

This driver also supports geometry columns using the GeoArrow specification.

Note

The driver should be considered experimental as the GeoArrow specification is not finalized yet.

## Driver capabilities

Supports Create()

This driver supports the `GDALDriver::Create()` operation

Supports Georeferencing

This driver supports georeferencing

Supports VirtualIO

This driver supports virtual I/O operations (/vsimem/, etc.)

## Creation issues

The driver supports creating only a single layer in a dataset.

## Layer creation options

- COMPRESSION=[NONE/ZSTD/LZ4]: Compression method. Available values depend on how the Arrow library was compiled. Defaults to LZ4 when available, otherwise NONE.

- FORMAT=[FILE/STREAM]: Variant of the file format. See introduction paragraph for the difference between both. Defaults to FILE, unless the filename is "/vsistdout/" or its extension is ".arrows", in which case STREAM is used.

- GEOMETRY_ENCODING=[GEOARROW/WKB/WKT]: Defaults to `GEOARROW`. Geometry encoding.

- BATCH_SIZE=<integer>: Defaults to `65536`. Maximum number of rows per record batch.

- GEOMETRY_NAME=value: Defaults to `geometry`. Name of geometry column.

- FID=value: Name of the FID (Feature Identifier) column to create. If none is specified, no FID column is created. Note that if using ogr2ogr with the Arrow driver as the target driver and a source layer that has a named FID column, this FID column name will be automatically used to set the FID layer creation option of the Arrow driver (unless `-lco FID=` is used to set an empty name)

## Conda-forge package

The driver can be installed as a plugin for the `libgdal` conda-forge package with:

    conda install -c conda-forge libgdal-arrow-parquet

## Links

- Feather File Format

- GeoArrow specification

- Related driver: Parquet driver