ubidots 1.6.1

Api Client to connect to ubidots.com api version 1.6

The Ubidots Python API Client makes calls to the Ubidots Api. The module is available on PyPi as “ubidots”.

To follow this quickstart you’ll need to install python 2.7 in your machine (either be it a computer or an python-capable device), you can find more details in http://www.python.org/download/.

Installing the Python library

Ubidots for python is available in Pypi and you can install it from the command line:

$ pip install ubidots==1.6.1

Don’t forget to use sudo if necessary.

You can install pip in Linux and Mac using this command:

$ sudo easy_install pip

If you don’t have easy_install, you can get it through apt-get:

$ sudo apt-get install python-setuptools

If you are using Microsoft Windows you can install pip from here.

Connecting to the API

Before playing with the API you must be able to connect to it using your private API key, which can be found in your profile.

If you don’t have an account yet, you can create one here.

Once you have your API key, you can connect to the API by creating an ApiClient instance. Let’s assume your API key is: “7fj39fk3044045k89fbh34rsd9823jkfs8323” then your code would look like this:

from ubidots import ApiClient

api = ApiClient('7fj39fk3044045k89fbh34rsd9823jkfs8323')

Now you have an instance of the apiclient (“api”) which can be used to connect to the API service.

Saving a new Value to a Variable

Retrieve the variable you’d like the value to be saved to:

my_variable = api.get_variable(id = '56799cf1231b28459f976417')

Given the instantiated variable, you can save a new value with the following line:

new_value = my_variable.save_value({'value':10})

You can also specify a timestamp (optional)

new_value = my_variable.save_value({'value':10, 'timestamp':1376061804407})

If no timestamp is specified, the API server will assign the current time to it. We think it’s always better that you specify the timestamp so that it reflects the exact time when the value was captured, and not the time when it got to our servers.

Creating a DataSource

As you might know by now, a data source represents a device or a virtual source.

This line creates a new data source:

new_datasource = api.create_datasource({"name":"myNewDs", "tags":["firstDs", "new"], "description":"any des"})

Name is required; tags and description are optional This new data source can be used to track different variables, so let’s create one.

Creating a Variable

A variable is a time-series containing different values over time. Let’s create one:

new_variable = new_datasource.create_variable({"name":"myNewVar", "unit":"Nw"})

Name and unit are required.

Saving Values in Bulk

Values may also be added in bulk. This is especially useful when data is gathered offline and connection to the internet is limited.

new_variable.save_values([
    {'timestamp': 1380558972614, 'value': 20},
    {'timestamp': 1380558972915, 'value': 40},
    {'timestamp': 1380558973516, 'value': 50},
    {'timestamp': 1380558973617, 'value': 30}
])

Getting Values

To get the values from a variable, use the method get_values in an instance of the class Variable, this will return a list like object with an aditional attribute items_in_server that tells you how many values this variable has stored in the server.

If you only want the last x values call the method with the number of elements you want.

#Getting all the values from the server, note that this could make a lot of request to the server and break your
#limit of request per second.
all_values = new_variable.get_values()

#If you want the last 100 values you can use:
some_values = new_variable.get_values(100)

Getting a group of Data sources

If you want to get all your data sources you can use the instance of the api directly, remember, given that the items are returned with pagination from the server, this method return a Paginator object that you can use to iterate throught the items:

#get all datasources
all_datasources = api.get_datasources()

#get_the last 5 created datasources
some_datasources = api.get_datasources(5)

Getting a specific Data source

Each data source has a unique id that tells the server which one to retrieve.

For example, if a data source has the id 51c99cfdf91b28459f976414, it can be retrieved using the method get_datasource of the ApiClient instance:

my_specific_datasource = api.get_datasource(id = '51c99cfdf91b28459f976414')

Getting a group of Variables from a Data source

You can also retrieve all the variables of a data source:

#get all variables
all_variables =  datasource.get_variables()

#get last 10 variables
some_variables =  datasource.get_variables(10)

Getting a specific Variable

As with data sources, use your variable’s id to retrieve the details about a variable:

my_specific_variable = api.get_variable(id = '56799cf1231b28459f976417')

Managing HTTP Exceptions

Given that some errors would happen when a request is made to Ubidots, the api client has some built in exceptions to make easier to spot the problems, the exceptions are:

UbidotsError400, UbidotsError404, UbidotsError500, UbidotsForbiddenError, UbidotsBulkOperationError

each error has the attributes: message: for a general message of the error. detail: generally a json from the server explaining in more detail the error.

you can use those exceptions in this way:

try:
    my_specific_variable = api.get_variable(id = '56799cf1231b28459f976417')
except UbidotsError400 as e:
    print "general description: %s; and the detail: %s"(e.message, e.detail)
except UbidotsForbiddenError as e:
    print "for some reason I don't have permissions to get this variable"
    print "general description %s and the detail: %s"(e.message, e.detail)

Other Exceptions

There is anoter exception UbidotsInvalidInputError wich is raised when the fields to create a Datasource a Variable or a Value are not complete.

For this version of the api the the fields for each resource are:

Datasource:

Required:

name: string.

Optional:

tags: list of strings.

description: string.

Variables:

Required:

name: string.

unit: string.

Values:

Required:

value: number (integer or float).

variable: string with the variable of the id id.

Optional:

timestamp: unix timestamp.