Jon Peck made some great comments on my prior post on passing arguments to the SPSSINC TRANS function. Besides advice on that I should be quoting the argument on the FORMULA statement, he gave examples of how you can use the "TO" argument in both passing variables lists within the python formula and assigning variables to the results. Here is a brief example of their use.

First I will be working with a tiny, toy dataset:

DATA LIST FREE / X1 TO X4.
BEGIN DATA
1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8
9 8 7 6
5 4 3 2
END DATA.
DATASET NAME Test.

Now here is a command that returns the second lowest value in a list. (While there are plenty of things you can do in base code, this python code is very simple compared to what you would have to do in vanilla SPSS to figure this out.) In a nutshell you can specify the variable list on the /VARIABLE subcommand (and mix in TO to specify adjacent variables as in most SPSS commands). And then insert these into the python formula by specifying <>.

SPSSINC TRANS RESULT = Second
  /VARIABLES X1 TO X4
  /FORMULA "sorted([<>])[1]".

In my prior post, I showed how you could do this for the original variables, which would look like /FORMULA "sorted([X1,X2,X3,X4])[1]". Here you can see I’ve specified a set of variables on the VARIABLES subcommand, and inserted them into a list using [<>]. Enclosing <> in brackets produces a list in python. I then sort the list and grab the second element (located at 1, since python uses 0 based indices). You can also mix variables in the dataset and the <> listed on the variables subcommand. See here for an example.

You can also use the TO modifier in making a new set of variables. Here I return the sorted variables X1 TO X4 as a new set of variables S1 TO S4.

SPSSINC TRANS RESULT = S1 TO S4
  /VARIABLES X1 TO X4
  /FORMULA "sorted([<>])".

In both the prior examples I omitted the TYPE argument, as it defaults to 0 (i.e. a numeric variable returned as a float). But when specifying variable lists of the same type for multiple variables you can simply specify the type one time and the rest of the results are intelligently returned as the same. Here is the same sorted example, except that I return the results each as a string of length 1 as opposed to a numeric value.

SPSSINC TRANS RESULT = A1 TO A4 TYPE = 1
  /VARIABLES X1 TO X4 
  /FORMULA "map(str, sorted([<>]))".

So I actually bothered to read the help the other day for SPSSINC TRANS, which being generic allows you to use Python functions similar to how COMPUTE statements work, just a bit more general. Two examples of passing arguments I did not know you could do were 1) pass a list as an argument, and 2) pass constants that aren’t SPSS variables to functions. To follow are a few brief examples.

The first is passing a list to a function, and here is a simple example using the Python function sorted().

DATA LIST FREE / X1 X2 X3.
BEGIN DATA
3 2 1
1 0 3
1 1 2
2 2 1
3 0 3
END DATA.
DATASET NAME Test.

SPSSINC TRANS RESULT=S1 S2 S3 TYPE=0
  /FORMULA sorted([X1,X2,X3]).

This takes the variables X1 to X3, sorts them, and returns them in a new set of variables S1 to S3. We can also do reverse sorting by passing a constant value of 1 to the reverse function, which acts synonymously with reverse=True.

SPSSINC TRANS RESULT=RS1 RS2 RS3 TYPE=0
  /FORMULA sorted([X1,X2,X3],reverse=1).

This is a rather simplistic example, but the action is much simpler in Python than whatever equivalent SPSS code you can come up with. When using the SPSSINC TRANS extension it expects the returned function to simply be a flat list. For this sorting situation though it might be convenient to return the order in which the original value was stored. Here I make a function that returns the indice of the original list, and then flattens the two into sequential order, per this SO answer.

BEGIN PROGRAM Python.
import itertools

def SortList(L,reverse=0):
  I = range(1,len(L)+1)
  x = sorted(zip(L,I),reverse=reverse)
  r = list(itertools.chain.from_iterable(x))
  return r

#example use
print SortList(L=[2,1,3])
print SortList(L=[2,1,3],reverse=1)
END PROGRAM.

MATCH FILES FILE = * /DROP S1 TO RS3.

SPSSINC TRANS RESULT= S1 T1 S2 T2 S3 T3 TYPE=0
  /FORMULA SortList([X1,X2,X3],reverse=1).

When passing a string constant to a function in SPSSINC TRANS you need to triple quote the string. This makes some of my prior examples of using the Google maps related API’s much simpler. Instead of making variables to pass to the function, you can just triple quote the constants. Also when using the maps API I often have an argument for the API key, but you will get results even without a key (I presume Google just checks the IP address an limits you after so many requests). So for many of my functions you can not worry about making an API key and just pass an empty string. Here is an example from my prior Google distance API post using string constants and no API key.

BEGIN PROGRAM Python.
import urllib, json

#This parses the returned json to pull out the distance in meters and
#duration in seconds, [None,None] is returned is status is not OK
def ExtJsonDist(place):
  if place['rows'][0]['elements'][0]['status'] == 'OK':
    meters = place['rows'][0]['elements'][0]['distance']['value']
    seconds = place['rows'][0]['elements'][0]['duration']['value']
  else:
    meters,seconds = None,None
  return [meters,seconds]

#Takes a set of lon-lat coordinates for origin and destination,
#plus your API key and returns the json from the distance API
def GoogDist(OriginX,OriginY,DestinationX,DestinationY,key):
  MyUrl = ('https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/distancematrix/json'
           '?origins=%s,%s'
           '&destinations=%s,%s'
           '&key=%s') % (OriginY,OriginX,DestinationY,DestinationX,key)
  response = urllib.urlopen(MyUrl)
  jsonRaw = response.read()
  jsonData = json.loads(jsonRaw)
  data = ExtJsonDist(jsonData)
  return data
END PROGRAM.

*Grab the online data.
DATASET CLOSE ALL.
SPSSINC GETURI DATA
URI="https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3385251/NewYork_ZipCentroids.sav"
FILETYPE=SAV DATASET=NY_Zips.

*Selecting out only a few.
SELECT IF $casenum <= 5.
EXECUTE.

SPSSINC TRANS RESULT=Meters Seconds TYPE=0 0 
/FORMULA GoogDist(OriginX=LongCent,OriginY=LatCent,DestinationX='''-78.276205''',DestinationY='''42.850721''',key=''' ''').

Sometimes there are calculations provided for in SPSS tables that are necessary to use for other calculations. A frequent one is to grab certain percentiles from a FREQUENCY table (Equal Probability Histograms in SPSS is one example). The typical way to do this is to grab the table using OMS, but where that is overkill is if you need to merge this info. back into the original data for further calculations. I will show a brief example of grabbing the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentiles from a frequency table and using Python to calculate a robust standardized variable using these summary statistics.

First we will make a set of random data to work with.

SET SEED 10.
MATRIX.
SAVE {UNIFORM(100,1)} /OUTFILE = *.
END MATRIX.
DATASET NAME U.
FREQ COL1 /FORMAT = NOTABLE /PERCENTILES = 25 50 75.

The frequency table we are working with then looks like:

Now to get to the items in this frequency table we just to do a bit of going down a rabbit hole of different python objects.

• The first block grabs the items in the output, which include tables and text.
• The second block then grabs the last table for this specific output. Note that minus 2 from the size of the list is necessary because Python uses zero based indices and there is a log item after the table. So if the size of the list is 10, that means list[9] is the last item in the list. (Using negative indices does not work for extracting from the OutputItemList object.)
• The third part then grabs the quantiles from the indices of the table. It ends up being in the first data column (so zero) and in the 3rd, 4th and 5th rows (again, Python uses zero based indices). Using GetUnformattedValueAt grabs the floating point number.
• The final part then uses these quantiles to calculate a robust normalized variable by using spss.Submit and string substitution. (And then closes the SPSS client at the end.)

BEGIN PROGRAM Python.
import SpssClient, spss

#start the client, grab the items in the output
SpssClient.StartClient()
OutputDoc = SpssClient.GetDesignatedOutputDoc()
OutputItemList = OutputDoc.GetOutputItems()

#Grab the last table, 0 based index
lastTab = OutputItemList.Size() - 2
OutputItem = OutputItemList.GetItemAt(lastTab)
PivotTable = OutputItem.GetSpecificType()
SpssDataCells = PivotTable.DataCellArray()

#Grab the specific quantiles
Q25 = float(SpssDataCells.GetUnformattedValueAt(2,0))
Q50 = float(SpssDataCells.GetUnformattedValueAt(3,0))
Q75 = float(SpssDataCells.GetUnformattedValueAt(4,0))
print [Q25,Q50,Q75]

#Use these stats in SPSS commands
spss.Submit("COMPUTE QuantNormX = ( COL1 - %(Q50)f )/( %(Q75)f - %(Q25)f )." % locals())
SpssClient.StopClient()
END PROGRAM.

While the python code in terms of complexity is just about the same as using OMS to grab the frequency table and merge the quantiles back into the original data, this will be much more efficient. I can imagine using this for other projects too, like grabbing coefficients from a regression model and estimating certain marginal effects.

I recently had a set of SPSS syntax that iterated over multiple variables and generated many similar graphs. They were time series graphs of multiple variables, so the time stayed the same but the variable on the Y axis changed and the code also changed the titles of the graphs. Initially I was using the % string substitution with a (long) list of replacements. Here is a brief synonymous example.

*Creating some fake data.
MATRIX.
SAVE {UNIFORM(100,6)} /OUTFILE = * /VARIABLES = V1 TO V3 X1 TO X3.
END MATRIX.
DATASET NAME x.

*Crazy long string substitution.
BEGIN PROGRAM Python.
import spss

#my variable and label lists
var = ["V1","V2","V3"]
lab = ["Var 1","Var 2","Var 3"]

for v,l in zip(var,lab):
  spss.Submit("""
*Descriptive statistics.
FREQ %s.
CORRELATIONS /VARIABLES=X1 X2 X3 %s.
*Graph 1.
GRAPH /SCATTERPLOT(BIVAR)=X1 WITH %s /TITLE = "%s".
*Graph 2.
GRAPH /SCATTERPLOT(BIVAR)=X2 WITH %s /TITLE = "%s".
*Graph 3.
GRAPH /SCATTERPLOT(BIVAR)=X3 WITH %s /TITLE = "%s".
""" % (v,v,v,l,v,l,v,l))
END PROGRAM.

When you only have to substitute one or two things, "str %s and %s" % (one,two) is no big deal, but here is quite annoying having to keep track of the location of all the separate variables when the list grows. Also we are really just recycling the same object to be replaced multiple times. I thought this is python, so there must be an easier way, and sure enough there is! A simple alternative is to use the format modifier to a string object. Format can take a vector of arguments, so the prior example would be "str {0} and {1}".format(one,two). Instead of %s, you place brackets and the index position of the argument (and Python has zero based indices, so the first element is always 0).

Here is the SPSS syntax updated to use format for string substitution.

*This is much simpler using ".format" for substitution.
BEGIN PROGRAM Python.

var = ["V1","V2","V3"]
lab = ["Var 1","Var 2","Var 3"]

for v,l in zip(var,lab):
  spss.Submit("""
*Descriptive statistics.
FREQ {0}.
CORRELATIONS /VARIABLES=X1 X2 X3 {0}.
*Graph 1.
GRAPH /SCATTERPLOT(BIVAR)=X1 WITH {0} /TITLE = "{1}".
*Graph 2.
GRAPH /SCATTERPLOT(BIVAR)=X2 WITH {0} /TITLE = "{1}".
*Graph 3.
GRAPH /SCATTERPLOT(BIVAR)=X3 WITH {0} /TITLE = "{1}".
""".format(v,l))    
END PROGRAM.

Much simpler. You can use a dictionary with the % substitution to the same effect, but here the format modifier is a quite simple solution. Another option I might explore more in the future are using string templates, which seem a good candidate for long strings of SPSS code.