h5config 0.3

H5config

H5config is a Python package for conviniently saving and loading configuration classes from disk. After populating base configuration classes with parameters, h5config automatically generates HDF5 and YAML backends for saving and loading that class. Yes, all this information could go into a single database, but if you like the flexibility of having a bunch of individual files that you can peek into one at a time, this module is for you.

I wrote the module to support my experiment-control infrastructure, and one of the key goals was to easily embed control parameters in the saved data:

experiment.h5
|-- raw/
|   |-- thermocouple: [32757, 32731, 32796, 32789, 32809, ...]
|   `-- deflection: [29808, 29793, 29782, 29817, 29775, ...]
|-- timeseries-config/
|   |-- frequency: 0.1
|   |-- run-time: 100
|   |-- thermocouple-channel/
|   |   |-- conversion-coefficients: [-10.0, 0.000305180437934]
|   |   `-- conversion-origin: [0.0]
|   |-- deflection-channel/
|   |   |-- conversion-coefficients: [-10.0, 0.000305180437934]
|   |   `-- conversion-origin: [0.0]
|   `-- thermocouple-calibration: [25.08355e3, 7.860106e4]
`-- environment-config/
    |-- temperature: 20
    `-- timestamp: 1311851980.750180

Storing all of the calibration and conversion factors can get complicated quickly. h5config will keep you organized, and allow you to focus on defining the config options without getting bogged down in the bookkeeping.

As a side effect, h5config also provides some tools to support system- and user-wide configuration files. For example, the pypiezo package uses h5config to automatically detect and load the following config file:

$ cat ~/.config/pypiezo.yaml
log-level: debug
matplotlib: no

Installation

# emerge -av app-portage/layman
# layman --add wtk
# emerge -av dev-python/h5config

$ git clone git://tremily.us/

$ python setup.py install

Usage

See the module docstrings for simple examples.

Testing

Run internal unit tests with:

$ nosetests --with-doctest --doctest-tests h5config

Licence

This project is distributed under the GNU General Public License Version 3 or greater.

Author

W. Trevor King wking@tremily.us