tscat — Time Series Catalogues

tscat is a Python library for managing catalogues of time intervals (events). It is the catalogue backend for SciQLop and is designed for space physics workflows — storing event lists such as magnetopause crossings, ICMEs, or any user-defined intervals with arbitrary metadata.

Events are persisted in a local SQLite database. No server required.

Installation

pip install tscat

Quick start

from datetime import datetime
from tscat import create_event, create_catalogue, add_events_to_catalogue, save

catalogue = create_catalogue("Bow shock crossings", author="Alice",
                             tags=["MMS", "bow_shock"])

events = [
    create_event(datetime(2023, 1, 1, 10, 0), datetime(2023, 1, 1, 10, 30),
                 author="Alice", tags=["inbound"], Bz_max=12.5),
    create_event(datetime(2023, 1, 3, 14, 0), datetime(2023, 1, 3, 14, 45),
                 author="Alice", tags=["outbound"], Bz_max=8.3),
]

add_events_to_catalogue(catalogue, events)
save()

Any keyword argument beyond the fixed fields (start, stop, author, tags, products, rating) becomes a custom attribute stored alongside the event.

Filtering

Retrieve events matching conditions using a natural Python DSL:

from tscat import get_events
from tscat.filtering import event, In, Field

# Events after a date
get_events(event.start >= datetime(2023, 1, 2))

# Combine predicates with &, |, ~
get_events((event.author == "Alice") & In("inbound", Field("tags")))

# Filter on custom attributes
get_events(event.Bz_max > 10.0)

Dynamic catalogues

A catalogue with a predicate automatically includes all matching events:

from tscat import create_catalogue
from tscat.filtering import event

dynamic = create_catalogue(
    "High Bz events", author="Alice",
    predicate=event.Bz_max > 10.0,
)

Import / export

Share catalogues as JSON or VOTable (AMDA-compatible):

from tscat import export_json, import_json, export_votable_str

json_str = export_json(catalogue)
import_json(json_str)  # into another database

Documentation

Full usage guide: docs/usage.rst

Development

This project uses uv:

uv sync --extra test
uv run pytest
uv run flake8 tscat tests

License

GNU General Public License v3