Add `table_exists` method to the Catalog

[Fokko]

Feature Request / Improvement

Prolonging the discussion in #406

I think having this method on the Catalog would be a great addition. On top of this, we can also leverage the table-exists implementation of the REST catalog by overriding this method in the REST catalog.

[jayceslesar]

could be similar to the mkdirs api? With exists_ok or some param?

https://docs.python.org/3/library/os.html#os.makedirs

[Fokko]

@jayceslesar I would keep it simple by just returning a bool.

[djouallah]

@kevinjqliu is this supported ?

AttributeError: 'SqlCatalog' object has no attribute 'table_exists'

[Fokko]

@djouallah No that's not expected. If it doesn't supported the specialized table_exists call, then it should do a load_table and catch the exception. Let's get this fixed 🚀

[MehulBatra]

If it's open to work, I can take a shot at it!

[Fokko]

@MehulBatra That would be great 👍

The main this is that we need to implement this method:

iceberg-python/pyiceberg/catalog/__init__.py

Lines 387 to 396 in 88a26e1

	@abstractmethod
	def table_exists(self, identifier: Union[str, Identifier]) -> bool:
	"""Check if a table exists.
	Args:
	identifier (str | Identifier): Table identifier.
	Returns:
	bool: True if the table exists, False otherwise.
	"""

[MehulBatra]

PR: #678

[HonahX]

Hi everyone, I think we've had the implementation. The only "issue" is that this feature hasn't been released yet. I'll add this one to 0.7.0 milestone.

@MehulBatra Thanks for the PR btw. It is good to have more tests for this feature

[Fokko]

Thanks @HonahX Let me close it for now 👍