docs/Writing_Segments.rst

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================
Writing Segments
================
Along with the creation of ``Segment`` objects, analysts also need a way to easily access the UserALE logs associated with
each ``Segment``.  Distill's Segmentation package allows analysts to do this through the use of the ``write_segment``
function.

Write Segment
-------------
The ``write_segment`` function creates a nested dictionary of segment names to UIDs which then map to individual logs
(i.e result['segment_name'][uid] --> log). This assists with easy iteration over defined ``Segment`` objects.

.. code:: python

    # Sorted dictionary of UserALE logs
    sorted_dict

    # List of segment names
    segment_names = ["segment1", "segment2"]

    # Time tuples
    start_end_vals = [(start_time_1, end_time_1), (start_time_2, end_time_2)]

    # Write Segments
    segments = distill.write_segment(sorted_dict, segment_names, start_end_vals)

The above code looks similar to the ``create_segments`` example usage, however, rather than returning a ``Segments`` object,
this code will create a dictionary of segment names to UIDs to individual UserALE logs.

Since ``Segments`` objects support list comprehensions, the usage of the ``write_segment`` functon after curating a collection
of ``Segment`` objects is simple.  Below is some example code that shows how this can be done with a ``Segments`` object:

.. code:: python

    # Sorted dictionary of UserALE logs
    sorted_dict

    # Segments object
    segments

    # Create list of segment names
    segment_names = [segment.segment_name for segment in segments]

    # Create list of start and end values
    start_end_vals = [segment.start_end_val for segment in segments]

    written_segments = distill.write_segments(sorted_dict, segment_names, start_end_vals)