Made _locate_spatial_element public, renamed to locate_element()

[LucaMarconato]

Closes #423.

[codecov[bot]]

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```diff @@ Coverage Diff @@ ## main #427 +/- ## ========================================== + Coverage 91.68% 91.73% +0.05% ========================================== Files 37 37 Lines 5053 5048 -5 ========================================== - Hits 4633 4631 -2 + Misses 420 417 -3 ``` | [Files](https://app.codecov.io/gh/scverse/spatialdata/pull/427?src=pr&el=tree&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=github&utm_content=comment&utm_campaign=pr+comments&utm_term=scverse) | Coverage Δ | | |---|---|---| | [src/spatialdata/\_core/spatialdata.py](https://app.codecov.io/gh/scverse/spatialdata/pull/427?src=pr&el=tree&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=github&utm_content=comment&utm_campaign=pr+comments&utm_term=scverse#diff-c3JjL3NwYXRpYWxkYXRhL19jb3JlL3NwYXRpYWxkYXRhLnB5) | `93.39% <85.71%> (+0.49%)` | :arrow_up: | | [src/spatialdata/transformations/operations.py](https://app.codecov.io/gh/scverse/spatialdata/pull/427?src=pr&el=tree&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=github&utm_content=comment&utm_campaign=pr+comments&utm_term=scverse#diff-c3JjL3NwYXRpYWxkYXRhL3RyYW5zZm9ybWF0aW9ucy9vcGVyYXRpb25zLnB5) | `92.52% <25.00%> (ø)` | |

[aeisenbarth]

is there something specific that would prevent you from doing something like this next(key for key, value in dd.items() if value == 'value') on the various elements?

Not really, except that on first try I did exactly that and got a deep comparison of every nested xarray attribute and array chunk, which was a major performance hit. Now knowing SpatialData's private implementation, I can do:

next(name for name, image in sdata.images.items() if id(image) == id(element))

which I then would refactor out to a utils function, which is so generic (not specific to my module) that one would wonder whether it better lives in SpatialData itself. Especially since other users would implement the same utils function, possibly doing the same mistakes.

But using that code is fine for me!

[giovp]

thanks @aeisenbarth

which I then would refactor out to a utils function, which is so generic (not specific to my module) that one would wonder whether it better lives in SpatialData itself. Especially since other users would implement the same utils function, possibly doing the same mistakes.

this is a good enough use case. I would then add the method to both Elements but also SpatialData, wdyt @LucaMarconato ?

[LucaMarconato]

Thanks for the comments, sounds good to me.

@aeisenbarth I would return paths; I suggest to get the name of the path for the lookup until we implement lookup by path. To get the type of the element I recommend to use get_model().

[LucaMarconato]

@giovp ready for re-review (please see also my comment in the remaining unresolved conversation).

[LucaMarconato]

I have addressed all the comments (changed the return type to an optional list of strings). So ready to merge now.