Flatline, a language for data generation and filtering

Flatline is a lispy language for the specification of values to be extracted or generated from an input dataset, using a finite sliding window of input rows.

In BigML, it is used either as a row filter specifier or as a field generator.

In the former case, the input consists of dataset rows on which a single, boolean expression is computed, and only those for which the result is true are kept in the output dataset.

When used to generate new datasets from given ones, a list of Flatline expressions is provided, each one generating either a value or a list of values, which are then concatenated together to conform the output rows (each value representing therefore a field in the generated dataset).

Documentation

• Flatline's user manual.
• Quick reference with all pre-defined functions.
• Or see the HTML version in Read the Docs.

Local interpreters

Javascript and Node.js

We include in js Flatline interpreters implemented in Javascript (compiled by Clojurescript from our canonical server-side implementation) that you can use from your browser or from a nodejs session.

Python

The python directory contains a small Python library that wraps the nodejs interpreter and lets you interact with it using Python. See its README for more information, including access to an iPython sample notebook.

License

Flatline reference documentation by BigML Inc is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

All code in this repository is released under the Apache License 2.0.