Improve docs on Arrow table input

[visr]

What we have
A configuration example with comment: https://ribasim.org/reference/usage.html#configuration-file
GeoPackage database and Arrow tables: https://ribasim.org/reference/usage.html#sec-geopackage
A tip on using Arrow state files: https://ribasim.org/reference/node/basin.html#sec-state

What is missing
An example of how to tell Ribasim Python to write a table to Arrow, like: https://github.com/Deltares/Ribasim/blob/v2025.1.0/python/ribasim_testmodels/ribasim_testmodels/basic.py#L210

And perhaps these sections can reference each other.

[Huite]

I must admit I haven't looked at the arrow input much, but this: model.basin.profile.set_filepath(Path("profile.arrow")) is not very intuitive.

I would prefer a property, basin.to_arrow = True or something.

Ideally, for the model, there's a single switch: e.g. write(arrow=True).

[visr]

Yeah the name set_filepath probably only makes sense if you know the internals.

For a Boolean we'd need to make a default mapping from table name Basin / profile to a path e.g. $(input_dir)/Basin/profile.arrow or something like that.

For the database we don't have the freedom in the TOML to select another table in the database, since Basin / profile is the fixed name. For Arrow files we currently do have this option. I imagine it can be useful sometimes to quickly swap out tables by only changing the TOML, but we could consider removing this option since I think it barely gets used so far.

I'd hold off on write(arrow=True) since the downsides are currently no QGIS support #318, and these files are usually not editable.

[Huite]

I'd hold off on write(arrow=True) since the downsides are currently no QGIS support #318, and these files are usually not editable.

You can keep the default value False. For imod-python, we have write(binary=True); the binary stuff isn't readable or editable either. You might argue this is a little bit different, we treat the MODFLOW formats just as an intermediate format (where data goes to die) and the Ribasim input is all nice open formats.

You can then document that the arrow stuff maybe works a little less smooth for now in combination with QGIS. I think it's fine to say that you cannot edit the arrow tables in QGIS. If manual editing is required, the model should be small anyway; in which case it can be stored in a geopackage.