Python Polars: The Definitive Guide

Jeroen Janssens, Thijs Nieuwdorp

ISBN 10: 1098156080 / ISBN 13: 9781098156084

Published by O'Reilly Media, US, 2025

About this Item

Want to speed up your data analysis and work with larger-than-memory datasets? Python Polars offers a blazingly fast, multithreaded, and elegant API for data loading, manipulation, and processing. With this hands-on guide, you'll walk through every aspect of Polars and learn how to tackle practical use cases using real-world datasets. Jeroen Janssens and Thijs Nieuwdorp from Xomnia in Amsterdam show you how this superfast DataFrame library is perfect for efficient data wrangling, ETL pipelines, and so much more. This book helps you quickly learn the syntax and understand Polars' underlying concepts. You don't need to have experience with pandas or Spark, but if you do, this book will help you make a smooth transition. With this definitive guide at your side, you'll be able to: Process larger-than-memory datasets at record speed Apply the eager, lazy, and streaming APIs of Polars and decide when to use them Transition smoothly from pandas or Spark to Polars Integrate Polars into your existing code base Work with Arrow and Parquet to efficiently read and write data Translate complex ETL tasks into efficient and elegant queries.

Seller Inventory # LU-9781098156084

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Python Polars: The Definitive Guide
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media, US
• Publication Date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1098156080
• ISBN 13: 9781098156084
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

Unlock the power of Polars, a Python package for transforming, analyzing, and visualizing data. In this hands-on guide, Jeroen Janssens and Thijs Nieuwdorp walk you through every feature of Polars, showing you how to use it for real-world tasks like data wrangling, exploratory data analysis, building pipelines, and more.

Whether you're a seasoned data professional or new to data science, you'll quickly master Polars' expressive API and its underlying concepts. You don't need to have experience with pandas, but if you do, this book will help you make a seamless transition. The many practical examples and real-world datasets are available on GitHub, so you can easily follow along.

• Process data from CSV, Parquet, spreadsheets, databases, and the cloud
• Get a solid understanding of Expressions, the building blocks of every query
• Handle complex data types, including text, time, and nested structures
• Use both eager and lazy APIs, and know when to use each
• Visualize your data with Altair, hvPlot, plotnine, and Great Tables
• Extend Polars with your own Python functions and Rust plugins
• Leverage GPU acceleration to boost performance even further

About the Author

Jeroen Janssens, PhD, is a Senior Developer Relations Engineer at Posit, PBC. His expertise lies in visualizing data, implementing machine learning models, and building solutions using Python, R, JavaScript, and Bash. He's passionate about open source and sharing knowledge. He's the author of Python Polars: The Definitive Guide (O'Reilly, 2025) and Data Science at the Command Line (O'Reilly, 2021). Jeroen holds a PhD in machine learning from Tilburg University and an MSc in artificial intelligence from Maastricht University. He lives with his wife and two kids in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.