Tutorial¶

Heedy’s timeseries transform capabilities are simple, but powerful. This tutorial will guide you from the very basics of transforming data to creating sophisticated transform pipelines.

Basics¶

Each datapoint in a timeseries has the following format:

{
"t": floating point timestamp (unix time in seconds),
"dt": floating point duration in seconds,
"d": the datapoint's data content.
}


Unless explicitly stated, transforms focus on the datapoint’s data content. To start out, we will use the following tiny timeseries (which has no duration):

[
{ "t": 123, "d": 2 },
{ "t": 124, "d": 3 },
{ "t": 125, "d": 0.1 },
{ "t": 126, "d": -50 }
]


Comparisons¶

Let’s check which datapoints have their data >= 1.

d >= 1


If you are familiar with programming, this is just a simple comparison statement. In PipeScript, d represents the “current datapoint”. The transform is then run on each consecutive datapoint in the timeseries:

[
{ "t": 123, "d": true },
{ "t": 124, "d": true },
{ "t": 125, "d": false },
{ "t": 126, "d": false }
]


You can also use and, or, and not to create logic of arbitrary complexity:

d < 0 or not d < 1

[
{ "t": 123, "d": true },
{ "t": 124, "d": true },
{ "t": 125, "d": false },
{ "t": 126, "d": true }
]


Algebra¶

PipeScript also supports basic algebra. In particular, +-/*%^ are all built into the language, with x^y meaning pow(x,y).

(d+5)/2


gives:

[
{ "t": 123, "d": 3.5 },
{ "t": 124, "d": 4 },
{ "t": 125, "d": 2.55 },
{ "t": 126, "d": -22.5 }
]


Aggregating Data¶

Not all transforms return an answer for each datapoint. Some aggregate your data:

sum

[{ "t": 123, "dt": 3, "d": -44.9 }]


As expected, the sum transform returns a single datapoint, which has in its data portion the sum over the entire timeseries. Examples of other available aggregators are count, mean, min, and max.

Filtering Data¶

Transforms can take arguments as input. For example, the filter transform removes all datapoints that don’t satisfy the condition given in its first argument:

filter(d>=2)

[
{ "t": 123, "d": 2 },
{ "t": 124, "d": 3 }
]


Note that the parentheses are optional here. The above transform is equivalent to:

filter d>=2


Chaining Transforms¶

Oftentimes, you want to combine multiple transforms. PipeScript allows you to do this using pipes:

a | b | c | d


The output of a is used as the input to b, and so forth.

For this section, we will use the following dataset from a fitness tracker:

[
{
"t": 1,
"d": {
"steps": 14,
"activity": "walking"
}
},
{
"t": 2,
"d": {
"steps": 10,
"activity": "running"
}
},
{
"t": 3,
"d": {
"steps": 12,
"activity": "walking"
}
},
{
"t": 4,
"d": {
"steps": 5,
"activity": "running"
}
}
]


Suppose we want to get the total number of steps we took while running. We cannot do this with one transform, but by chaining together a couple simple transforms, we can get there!

First off, let’s filter the datapoints so that we have just those where we were running:

filter d("activity")=="running"


Notice that the d accepts an argument - it allows you to return a sub-object of the datapoint. Our result is:

[
{
"t": 2,
"d": {
"steps": 10,
"activity": "running"
}
},
{
"t": 4,
"d": {
"steps": 5,
"activity": "running"
}
}
]


We can now add a | after the first part of our statement, and we can perform further transforms on the result of the previous operation (shown above). After extracting only the datapoints that have their activity as “running”, we return only the “steps” portion of the datapoint:

filter d("activity")=="running" | d("steps")

[
{
"t": 2,
"d": 10
},
{
"t": 4,
"d": 5
}
]


Finally, we want to sum the datapoints to get the total number of steps while running:

filter d("activity")=="running" | d("steps") | sum

[
{
"t": 2,
"dt": 2,
"d": 15
}
]


All arguments to each transform are actually transform pipelines. For example, one can go multiple levels into a nested object within an argument to the filter transform:

filter( (d("level1") | d("level2")) == 4 )


For convenience, PipeScript also includes : as a pipe symbol with high prescedence (the pipe will be taken before algebra is done) which can allow you to simplify your script a bit by dropping the internal parentheses:

filter( d("level1"):d("level2") == 4 )


In order for the parent (filter) to always get SOME result in its argument, sub-transforms cannot include transforms that are not One-To-One (for each datapoint that they get as input, they output one datapoint). This means that you cannot nest filter transforms.

Pipe Args¶

Some advanced transforms have an argument listed as a pipe type. Sub-transforms are linked to previous data, whereas pipes are treated as scripts, which are managed by the transform.

As an example, the map transform splits the timeseries along unique values of its first argument, and runs the pipe given in its second argument on each resulting stream.

We will once again use the timeseries from the previous example:

[
{
"t": 1,
"d": {
"steps": 14,
"activity": "walking"
}
},
{
"t": 2,
"d": {
"steps": 10,
"activity": "running"
}
},
{
"t": 3,
"d": {
"steps": 12,
"activity": "walking"
}
},
{
"t": 4,
"d": {
"steps": 5,
"activity": "running"
}
}
]


Remember that previously, we found the total number of steps while running with the transform filter d("activity")=="running" | d("steps") | sum.

We will now extend that to find the number of steps for each activity, using the map transform:

map( d("activity") , d("steps"):sum )

[
{
"t": 4,
"dt": 3,
"d": {
"walking": 26,
"running": 15
}
}
]


What happened here?

When calling map(arg1,arg2), the map transform uses arg2 as a Pipe. It then makes copies of arg2 for each value of arg1, returning the output of the pipe for each instantiation/

To clarify, we will see exactly what happened in the above call:

1. The map transform saw the first datapoint. The value of arg1, (d("activity")) was walking. It created a new instance of arg2, d("steps"):sum, and sent the datapoint through this transform, giving a total of 14 so far for walking.

2. The next datapoint had as its activity running. Another new instance of d("steps"):sum was created, and the datapoint was sent through it. The sum for running starts at 10

3. The third datapoint is walking. map already has a pipeline started for this value, so it passes the new datapoint through the first pipe, giving a sum of 26 (14+12)

4. The fourth datapoint is running. Passing it to the the corresponding pipe, we get 15.

5. There are no more datapoints. The map transform returns an object with the last value of each pipe as a result.

The ability of transforms to be passed pipes as arguments allows them to do extremely powerful aggregations.

Object-Valued Transforms¶

You might want to perform multiple calculations at once in pipescript, or perhaps simply return an object. For this reason, PipeScript supports JSON-like values:

{"sum": sum, "total": count}


This transform will return both the sum of all of the datapoints’ values, and the number of datapoints at the same time. This object support also enables you to save values for later use in the pipeline.

Finally, since transforms can get fairly complex with objects, PipeScript does accept multiline scripts. That is, the following is a valid script format:

filter d("activity")!="still"
| {
"total": d("steps"):sum,
"some_random_stuff": ( d("steps") | something | something else )
}