Implementation:Eventual Inc Daft Session Create Temp Table

Knowledge Sources	Daft Daft Docs
Domains	Data_Engineering, Session_Management
Last Updated	2026-02-08 00:00 GMT

Overview

Concrete tool for creating temporary tables scoped to a session's lifetime provided by the Daft library.

Description

The create_temp_table method on Session creates a temporary table from either a Schema or DataFrame source. If a Schema is provided, a PyTableSource is created from the schema. If a DataFrame is provided, the source is created from the DataFrame's logical plan builder. The method delegates to the Rust PySession.create_temp_table with replace=True, meaning that creating a temp table with an existing name silently replaces it.

Usage

Call sess.create_temp_table("name", df) on a Session instance. Use when you need to reference a DataFrame by name in SQL queries.

Code Reference

Source Location

• Repository: Daft
• File: daft/session.py
• Lines: L327-361

Signature

def create_temp_table(self, identifier: str, source: Schema | DataFrame) -> Table

Import

from daft.session import Session
import daft

sess = Session()
sess.create_temp_table("my_table", daft.from_pydict({"x": [1, 2, 3]}))

I/O Contract

Inputs

Name	Type	Required	Description
identifier	str	Yes	Table name for the temporary table.
source	DataFrame	Yes	Table data source. A Schema defines structure only; a DataFrame provides both structure and data.

Outputs

Name	Type	Description
return	Table	A Table instance scoped to the session's lifetime.

Usage Examples

Basic Usage

import daft
from daft.session import Session

sess = Session()

# Register DataFrames as temp tables
sess.create_temp_table("T", daft.from_pydict({"x": [1, 2, 3]}))
sess.create_temp_table("S", daft.from_pydict({"y": [4, 5, 6]}))

# List all temp tables
sess.list_tables()
# [Identifier('T'), Identifier('S')]

# Query using SQL
sess.sql("SELECT * FROM T").show()

Related Pages

Implements Principle

• Principle:Eventual_Inc_Daft_Temp_Table_Registration

Requires Environment

• Environment:Eventual_Inc_Daft_Python_PyArrow_Core