ads 0.0.807dev

**A Python Module to Interact with NASA's ADS that Doesn't Suck™**
==================================================================

[](https://travis-ci.org/andycasey/ads) [](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/ads/)

If you're in research, then you pretty much _need_ NASA's ADS. It's tried, true, and people go crazy on the rare occasions when it goes down.

**Getting Started**

1. You'll need an API key from NASA ADS labs. Sign up for the newest version of ADS search [here](http://labs.adsabs.harvard.edu/adsabs/user/signup), then you can apply for API access by filling out [this form](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dFJZbHp1WERWU3hQVVJnZFJjbE05SGc6MQ#gid=0).

2. When you get your API key, save it to a file called ``~/.ads/dev_key`` or save it as an environment variable named ``ADS_DEV_KEY``

3. From a terminal type ``pip install ads`` (or [if you must](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3220404/why-use-pip-over-easy-install), use ``easy_install ads``)

Happy Hacking!


**Examples**

You can use this module to search for some popular supernova papers:
````
In [1]: import ads

In [2]: papers = ads.query("supernova", sort="citations", rows=5)

In [3]: for paper in papers:
print(paper.title)
...:
[u'Maps of Dust Infrared Emission for Use in Estimation of Reddening and Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation Foregrounds']
[u'Measurements of Omega and Lambda from 42 High-Redshift Supernovae']
[u'Observational Evidence from Supernovae for an Accelerating Universe and a Cosmological Constant']
[u'First-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Determination of Cosmological Parameters']
[u'Abundances of the elements: Meteoritic and solar']
````

Or search for papers first-authored by someone:
````
In [4]: people = list(ads.query(authors="^Reiss, A"))

In [5]: people[0].author
Out[5]: [u'Reiss, A. E.', u'Marchis, F.', u'Emery, J. P.']
````

Or papers where they are anywhere in the author list:
````
In [6]: papers = list(ads.query(authors="Reiss, A"))

In [7]: papers[0].author
Out[7]:
[u'Freeman, William',
u'Bishop, J.',
u'Marchis, F.',
u'Emery, J.',
u'Reiss, A. E.',
u'Hiroi, T.',
u'Navascu\xe9s, D. Barrado y.',
u'Shaddad, M. H.',
u'Jenniskens, P.']
````

Or search by affiliation:
````
In [8]: papers = list(ads.query(affiliation="*stromlo*", rows=5))

In [8]: papers[0].aff
Out[8]:
[u'Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, Madingley Road, Cambridge CB3 0HA, UK;',
u'Astronomisches Rechen-Institut, Zentrum f\xfcr Astronomie der Universit\xe4t Heidelberg, D-69120 Heidelberg, Germany',
u'JHU-APL, 11100 Johns Hopkins Road, Laurel, MD 20723, USA',
u"UJF-Grenoble 1/CNRS-INSU, Institut de Plan\xe9tologie et d'Astrophysique (IPAG) UMR 5274, F-38041 Grenoble, France; Laboratorio Franco-Chileno de Astronomia (UMI 3386: CNRS - U de Chile/PUC/U Conception), Santiago, Chile",
u'Department of Physics, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH 45221-0011, USA',
u'Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, Madingley Road, Cambridge CB3 0HA, UK',
u'Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, The Australian National University, Mount Stromlo Observatory, Cotter Road, Weston Creek, ACT 2611, Australia',
u'Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA',
u'The Aerospace Corporation, Mail Stop: M2-266, P.O. Box 92957, Los Angeles, CA 90009-2957, USA',
u'The Aerospace Corporation, Mail Stop: M2-266, P.O. Box 92957, Los Angeles, CA 90009-2957, USA',
u'The Aerospace Corporation, Mail Stop: M2-266, P.O. Box 92957, Los Angeles, CA 90009-2957, USA',
u'The Aerospace Corporation, Mail Stop: M2-266, P.O. Box 92957, Los Angeles, CA 90009-2957, USA',
u'SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research, NL-9747 AD Groningen, the Netherlands',
u'The Boeing Company, 535 Lipoa Pkwy, Kihei, HI 96753, USA',
u'Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, The Australian National University, Mount Stromlo Observatory, Cotter Road, Weston Creek, ACT 2611, Australia']
````

In the above examples we ````list()```` the results from ````ads.query```` because ````ads.query```` is a generator, allowing us to return any number of papers for a given query. It will parallelise threads and continue to retrieve papers relevant to your query. Each object returned is an ````ads.Article```` object, which has a number of *very* handy attributes:

````
In [9]: first_paper = papers[0]

In [10]: first_paper
Out[10]: <ads.Article object at 0x1036b3b90>

# Show some brief details about the paper
In [11]: print first_paper
<Kennedy et al. 2014, 2014MNRAS.438.3299K>

# You can access attributes of an object in IPython by using the 'tab' button:
In [12]: first_paper.
first_paper.abstract first_paper.bibtex first_paper.database first_paper.keyword first_paper.property first_paper.title
first_paper.aff first_paper.build_citation_tree first_paper.doi first_paper.keyword_norm first_paper.pub first_paper.url
first_paper.author first_paper.build_reference_tree first_paper.id first_paper.keyword_schema first_paper.pubdate first_paper.volume
first_paper.bibcode first_paper.citation_count first_paper.identifier first_paper.metrics first_paper.reference_count first_paper.year
first_paper.bibstem first_paper.citations first_paper.issue first_paper.page first_paper.references
````

Which allows you to easily build complicated queries. A short list of [more advanced examples](https://github.com/andycasey/ads/tree/master/examples) are included, and there are more to come. Feel free to fork this repository and add your own examples!

**License**

Copyright 2014 Andy Casey

This is open source software available under the MIT License. For details see the LICENSE file.