AttributeBoss Logo

AttributeBoss performs routine standardization and extraction tasks common to data transformation preprocessing requirements.

• standardize the treatment of missing data (missing_val_handler())
• clean any str data (str_prep())
• validate address, postal, and phone data (validate_attribute())
• standardize address data by removing aligning use of prefix and suffixes and street directions (standardize_address())
• standardize postal codes by removing common differences in representation (standardize_postal_code())
• standardize phone numbers by removing common differences in reporesentation (standardize_phone_number())
• standardize province and state names to abbreviated title (standardize_province_state())
• extract an address (street number, street name, street prefix / suffix, street directions) from a complex str (extract_address())
• extract a postal code from a str (extract_postal_code())
• extract a phone number from a str (extract_phone_number())

see Suggested Steps for Implementation below for proper use

AttributeBoss Forever

Signing off but inevitably back on -B

• This library was built to quickly bring key attributes into alignment (Standardize) for further preprocessing tasks
• It has Spark and Python functionality.

from AttributeBoss.SparkTools import SparkBoss ab = SparkBoss()

• The Spark compatibilities of AttributeBoss use PySpark dataframe column instances to transform data.
• To initialize:

from AttributeBoss.PyTools import PyBoss ab = PyBoss()

• The base python functions in AttributeBoss are built around the assumption that Pandas DataFrames are being used, and they are therefore required input types.
• most of the functions leverage py dict structures to perform replacement tasks given that they are much more efficient than using for loops or step by step tasks
• with this in mind, the input for each function should be a pd.Series unless otherwise stated
• the output of each function is a pd.Series, which will make it easy to write it back to your DF
• ex:
  • standardized_attribute = standardize_address(df['my_attribute'])
  • df['my_attribute] = standardized_attribute

• this library was designed to be used in steps and some functions rely on others to work properly
• It is suggested that a user take the following approach:
  • for address data: missing_val_handler() --> standardize_address() --> extract_address() --> validate_attribute()
    • standardize_address() leverages cln_str() so it is not neccessary to use it
    • extract_address() is looking for a matches based off the standard prefix / suffix / street direction abbreviations implemented via standardize_address
    • validate_attribute() is looking only for NoneType data and returning a list of indices that match None -- in this way, extract_address() is actually validating your address data and returning None where it doesnt find a match.
  • any string: missing_val_handler() --> cln_strs()
    • cln_strs() performs basic cleaning in this order (the order is important): Changes str to uppercase, removes new lines, different types of apostrophies, periods, hyphens, parenthesis, adjusts commas. Replaces all types of french accents with standard letter. Removes all non-ascii characters, and finally remove any spaces more than one and trim any remaining whitespaces.
    • note that cln_strs() should be satisfactory for most categorical data -- however, it is not intended for text based data where puncuation matters!
  • postal, phone, or province data missing_val_handler() --> standardize_xxx() --> extract_xxx() --> validate_attribute()