BigQuery: to_arrow() method similar to to_dataframe() #5204
Description
Current there's a to_dataframe() method that returns a pandas DataFrame from a query. DataFrames don't efficiently support array and struct values, but pyarrow provides efficient support for them:
In [11]: import pyarrow as pa
In [13]: a = pa.array(
...: [
...: {'a': [1, 2, 3]}
...: ],
...: pa.struct([pa.field('a', pa.list_(pa.int64()))])
...: )
In [14]: a
Out[14]:
<pyarrow.lib.StructArray object at 0x7f55f8764b88>
[
{'a': [1, 2, 3]}
]A to_arrow() method will make it easier to efficiently support more complex types going forward in downstream libraries like ibis.