I'm investigating Google refine to speed up some of my data work -- never used it before this week, but I like a lot of what I see.
My biggest question so far is whether it's possible to call external python functions from Refine. I know you can call jython internally, but that doesn't provide access to C-based python libraries (e.g. lxml), and I have scripts elsewhere that I'd like to integrate, without lots of copy-paste or rewrite hassle.
What options are there for doing this in Refine? I'm willing to get creative -- I just want a stable, re-usable solution.
As Google Refine Wiki says:
lxml will NOT work in Jython, since lxml has C bindings for CPython (regular Python), hence will not work in Refine which is Jython / Java only, and has no CPython interpreter built-in
But you can try Google Refine Python Client Library to create projects and manipulate your data programmatically.