Utility Functions

Distill provides two useful utility functions that can aid in the preprocessing of UserALE logs. They include the epoch_to_datetime and get_UUID functions. Below we provide an overview of both:

Epoch to Datetime

The epoch_to_datetime function will take a string representation of unix time and convert it into an integer. An example usage of this function is as follows:

string_time = "1000"
integer_time = distill.epoch_to_datetime(string_time)
integer_time    # 1000 represented as an integer

This function is specifically useful when preprocessing UserALE logs for Segmentation as logs can sometimes be read in as strings and Segmentation requires that they be formatted as either integers or datetime objects.

Get UUID

The get_uuid function will take a UserALE log and output a universally unique identifier (UUID) for that log. An example usage of this function is shown below:

# A UserALE log
log

# Generate UUID
uuid = distill.getUUID(log)

Similarly to the epoch_to_datetime function, the get_uuid function is particularly useful when preprocessing UserALE logs in preparation for Segmentation.