How easy can it be to create a zarr array

[d-v-b]

Users come to Zarr with a variety of array-like objects -- numpy arrays, or dask arrays, or xarray DataArrays, zarr v2 arrays, zarr v3 arrays, etc. Imagine a venn diagram of attributes / methods for these objects: shape, __getitem__, dtype would be in the shared middle, and chunks, chunksize, attrs, dims, codecs, filters in the disjoint periphery. How can we conveniently model an arbitrary array-like object as a Zarr array? In particular, how can we ensure that you can create a complete Zarr array from an existing array-like object (which might be already a zarr array) with a single function call?

If we agree on that objective, then here is a rough outline of what that function could look like:

• we should have a top-level from_array method that creates a Zarr array from an existing array-like object.

# numpy
np_arr = np.zeros(10)
zarr.from_array(np_arr) # memorystore-backed zarr v3 array with shape 10 and dtype float64, and default parameters for everything else
zarr.from_array(np_arr, zarr_format=2, compressor=Gzip(), attributes={'foo': 10}) # same as above, but v2, with gzip, and attributes

# dask
da_arr = da.zeros((10,), chunks=(1,))
zarr.from_array(da_arr) # inherits the `chunks` attribute from the array
zarr.from_array(da_arr, chunking_bikeshed=(2,)) # overrides the chunks attribute, kwarg name tbd 🙃 

# xarray
xr_arr = xarray.DataArray(np.zeros(10), attrs={'foo': 10}, dims=('dim_0',))
zarr.from_array(xr_arr) # zarr v3 array with dimension names inherited xr_arr.dims, attrs from xr_arr.attrs)

# zarr
zarr.from_array(zarr.zeros(10)) # makes a copy of the array

some open questions:

• should we copy data? over in pydantic-zarr I implemented a from_array function that only creates array metadata, because users might not want to eagerly move 10 TB of data at array definition time. Perhaps this could be controlled with a keyword argument.
• should we support creating v2 arrays through this API, or use a v2.from_array function for that? I'm fine either way.
• How much work is required to implicitly model the different array-like libraries enough for the above functionality to be useful?
• There is a similar question about zarr groups, but the set of "zarr-group-like objects" is a bit narrower than array-likes.
  Thoughts?

[jni]

Big supporter here @d-v-b. Actually the main reason I use zarr-python more heavily than tensorstore is having to specify a spec in tensorstore 😂 🦥. Convenience functions with sane defaults are very important!

[d-v-b]

relevant: #2410