Feature proposal: DataArray.to_zarr()

[jhamman]

Is your feature request related to a problem?

It would be nice to mimic the behavior of DataArray.to_netcdf for the Zarr backend.

Describe the solution you'd like

This should be possible:

xr.open_dataarray('file.nc').to_zarr('store.zarr')

Describe alternatives you've considered

None.

Additional context

xref DataArray.to_netcdf issue/PR: #915 / #990

[keewis]

I guess the alternative would be to go with xr.save_dataset / xr.save_dataarray, but that seems like a lot of work (and I agree that since we already have Dataset.to_zarr we can also have DataArray.to_zarr)

[jhamman]

I was once a fan of the save_dataset route but I think we've opted to stick with the format specific to_ methods.

[keewis]

As far as I understand #5954 and the meeting notes, we didn't decide anything about that yet (I might be wrong, though). So I assume the only reason we don't have write backends and save_dataset / save_dataarray right now is that nobody got around to doing that yet.

[jhamman]

Fair enough. I was extrapolating a bit based on the response to #7496. If someone wants to bite off the writable backends task, I'm all for it.

[TomNicholas]

👍 to not having to write to_dataset before saving things.

I think the .to_X vs e.g. .save(engine='X') is important enough that we should think about it a bit more. The response to #7496 doesn't seem conclusive to me (yet).

A twitter poll? Then a discussion in a meeting?