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<li>table_column_to_votable_datatype</li>
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<div class="section" id="table-column-to-votable-datatype">
<h1>table_column_to_votable_datatype<a class="headerlink" href="#table-column-to-votable-datatype" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h1>
<dl class="function">
<dt id="astropy.io.votable.converters.table_column_to_votable_datatype">
<tt class="descclassname">astropy.io.votable.converters.</tt><tt class="descname">table_column_to_votable_datatype</tt><big>(</big><em>column</em><big>)</big><a class="reference external" href="http://github.com/astropy/astropy/tree/v0.2.4/astropy/io/votable/converters.py#L1309" title="Push the Edit button on the next page"><span class="edit-on-github viewcode-link"> [edit on github]</span></a><a class="reference internal" href="../_modules/astropy/io/votable/converters.html#table_column_to_votable_datatype"><span class="viewcode-link">[source]</span></a><a class="headerlink" href="#astropy.io.votable.converters.table_column_to_votable_datatype" title="Permalink to this definition">¶</a></dt>
<dd><p>Given a <tt class="xref py py-obj docutils literal"><span class="pre">astropy.table.Column</span></tt> instance, returns the attributes
necessary to create a VOTable FIELD element that corresponds to
the type of the column.</p>
<p>This necessarily must perform some heuristics to determine the
type of variable length arrays fields, since they are not directly
supported by Numpy.</p>
<p>If the column has dtype of “object”, it performs the following
tests:</p>
<blockquote>
<div><ul class="simple">
<li>If all elements are byte or unicode strings, it creates a
variable-length byte or unicode field, respectively.</li>
<li>If all elements are numpy arrays of the same dtype and with a
consistent shape in all but the first dimension, it creates a
variable length array of fixed sized arrays. If the dtypes
match, but the shapes do not, a variable length array is
created.</li>
</ul>
</div></blockquote>
<p>If the dtype of the input is not understood, it sets the data type
to the most inclusive: a variable length unicodeChar array.</p>
<table class="docutils field-list" frame="void" rules="none">
<col class="field-name" />
<col class="field-body" />
<tbody valign="top">
<tr class="field-odd field"><th class="field-name">Parameters :</th><td class="field-body"><p class="first"><strong>column</strong> : <tt class="xref py py-obj docutils literal"><span class="pre">astropy.table.Column</span></tt> instance</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr class="field-even field"><th class="field-name">Returns :</th><td class="field-body"><p class="first"><strong>attributes</strong> : dict</p>
<blockquote class="last">
<div><p>A dict containing ‘datatype’ and ‘arraysize’ keys that can be
set on a VOTable FIELD element.</p>
</div></blockquote>
</td>
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