binary wire format with flatbuffers (#509)

* first flatbuffer schema

* do not lint auto-generated files

* add flatbuffers package

* add flatbuffer module

* wire up /data/X/T route

* use flatbuffers for matrix data fetc

* clarity and comments

* add flatbuffer layout route

* clean up obsolete code

* fix tests

* move flake8 config to setup.cfg

* add comments

* lint

* rework layout routes for fbs

* add more type support to fbs

* lint

* add flatbuffer support for annotations

* function name improvements

* fix botched merge with master

* remove unused import

* route cleanup for flatbuffers

* rename function for clarity

* add missing globals to Jest tests

* fix client JS tests

* fix routes for Python tests

* comments for clarity

* non-finite floating point hardening

* more non-finite number handling

* lint

* fix tests for summarizeAnnotations

* harden diffexp calculation against FP errors

* cleanup unused code

* lint

* add encoding tests for flatbuffers

* application type specified as strings

* fix spelling error

* improve variable names

* add note about documentation gap

* rename FBS DataFrame to Matrix

server/app/driver/driver.py

@@ -66,6 +66,11 @@ class CXGDriver(metaclass=ABCMeta):
         """
         pass
 
+    @abstractmethod
+    def annotation_to_fbs_matrix(self, axis, field=None):
+        """ Same as annotation(), except returns a flatbuffer, and does not support filtering. """
+        pass
+
     @abstractmethod
     def data_frame(self, filter, axis):
         """
@@ -79,6 +84,10 @@ class CXGDriver(metaclass=ABCMeta):
         """
         pass
 
+    @abstractmethod
+    def data_frame_to_fbs_matrix(self, filter, axis):
+        pass
+
     @abstractmethod
     def diffexp_topN(self, obsFilter1, obsFilter2, top_n=None, interactive_limit=None):
         """
@@ -104,3 +113,8 @@ class CXGDriver(metaclass=ABCMeta):
         :return:  [cellid, x, y, ...]
         """
         pass
+
+    @abstractmethod
+    def layout_to_fbs_matrix(self, filter):
+        """ same as layout, except returns a flatbuffer """
+        pass