Configure timestamp downcast programmatically

[devinrsmith]

Feature Request / Improvement

During testing of 0.7.0rc1, I noticed timestamp downcast errors, introduced as part of #848.

I'd like to have a way to programmatically configure timestamp downcast in the python API without relying on environment variables or a yaml configuration file.

I would have assumed that something like

from pyiceberg.table import DOWNCAST_NS_TIMESTAMP_TO_US_ON_WRITE

catalog = ...

table = catalog.create_table(
    ...
    properties={DOWNCAST_NS_TIMESTAMP_TO_US_ON_WRITE: True},
)

or

from pyiceberg.table import DOWNCAST_NS_TIMESTAMP_TO_US_ON_WRITE

catalog = load_catalog(
    ...,
    **{
        DOWNCAST_NS_TIMESTAMP_TO_US_ON_WRITE: "True",
    }
)

would have been the proper way to configure it, but it doesn't seem to take in either case.

[sungwy]

Hi @devinrsmith thank you again for raising this suggestion. I'm working on a similar property driven feature in #986 where I'm proposing that we load the pyarrow file IO config property into the table property as you suggest in the bottom proposal

For example, it will look like:

from pyiceberg.io import PYARROW_DOWNCAST_NS_TIMESTAMP_TO_US_ON_WRITE

catalog = load_catalog(
    ...,
    **{
        PYARROW_DOWNCAST_NS_TIMESTAMP_TO_US_ON_WRITE: "True",
    }
)

When the proposed approach is accepted and merged, I will open a PR to suggest a similar configuration.