taup_python

Access to the TauP Toolkit from Python via an HTTP server.

The problem is that lots of seismologists like writing Python scripts, but calling a Java library from Python seems somewhere between hard and impossible. But interaction doesn't require direct interoperation. The basic idea of this solution (or bandaid) is that this python library will spin up an instance of taup web, and then use that to answer many queries via http, avoiding the startup time of Java.

You will also need to have an instance of the TauP Toolkit installed. This can be done manually by downloading from Zenodo or from Homebrew via

brew tap crotwell/crotwell
brew trust --formula crotwell/crotwell/taup 
brew install taup

The Python classes representing each tool's query parameters are based off off the command line arguments of the same name. For example, this Python code:

import taup

with taup.TauPServer() as taupserver:
    timeParams = taup.TimeQuery()
    timeParams.phase(["P", "S"])
    timeParams.mod('ak135')
    timeParams.degree(35)
    timeResult = timeParams.calc(taupserver)
    print("Phase  Depth   Dist   Time")
    for a in timeResult.arrivals:
        print(f"{a.phase}      {a.sourcedepth}     {a.distdeg}   {a.time}")

roughly corresponds to this command line:

bin/taup time --ph P,S --mod ak135 --deg 35 --json

Note that if you have many calculations in a loop, you want to have the loop on the inside of the with taup.TauPServer() as taupserver: line so that the server is only started up once.

See example_times.py and others in the examples directory for more detailed examples.

Documentation available at readthedocs for TauP-python