Python error using pyarrow - ArrowNotImplementedError: Support for codec 'snappy' not built

Question

Using Python, Parquet, and Spark and running into ArrowNotImplementedError: Support for codec 'snappy' not built after upgrading to pyarrow=3.0.0. My previous version without this error was pyarrow=0.17. The error does not appear in pyarrow=1.0.1 and does appear in pyarrow=2.0.0. The idea is to write a pandas DataFrame as a Parquet Dataset (on Windows) using Snappy compression, and later to process the Parquet Dataset using Spark.

import numpy as np
import pandas as pd
import pyarrow as pa
import pyarrow.parquet as pq

df = pd.DataFrame({
    'x': [0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1], 
    'a': np.random.random(6), 
    'b': np.random.random(6)})
table = pa.Table.from_pandas(df, preserve_index=False)
pq.write_to_dataset(table, root_path=r'c:/data', partition_cols=['x'], flavor='spark')

Answer 1

Something is wrong with the conda install pyarrow method. I removed it with conda remove pyarrow and after that installed it with pip install pyarrow. This ended up working.

Answer 2

The pyarrow package you had installed did not come from conda-forge and it does not appear to match the package on PYPI. I did a bit more research and pypi_0 just means the package was installed via pip. It does not mean it actually came from PYPI.

I'm not really sure how this happened. You could maybe check your conda log (envs/YOUR-ENV/conda-meta/history) but, given that this was installed external from conda, I'm not sure there will be any meaningful information in there. Perhaps you tried to install Arrow after the version was bumped to 3 and before the wheels were uploaded and so your system fell back to building from source?