Getting Started

Installation

Important

To install this package, ensure that you are using one of the supported Python versions

Install sdf-xarray from PyPI with:

pip install sdf-xarray

or download this code locally:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/epochpic/sdf-xarray.git
cd sdf-xarray
pip install .

Interaction

There are two main ways to load EPOCH SDF files into xarray objects: using the dedicated sdf_xarray functions or using the standard xarray interface with our custom engine. For examples of how to use these functions see Loading SDF files.

All code examples throughout this documentation are visualised using Jupyter notebooks so that you can interactively explore the datasets. To do this on your machine make sure that you have the necessary dependencies installed:

pip install "sdf-xarray[jupyter]"

Important

When loading SDF files, variables related to boundaries, cpu and output file are excluded as they are problematic. If you wish to load these variables in see Loading raw files.

Using sdf_xarray (Recommended)

These functions are wrappers designed specifically for SDF data, providing the most straightforward experience:

• Single files: Use sdf_xarray.open_dataset or sdf_xarray.open_datatree

• Multiple files: Use sdf_xarray.open_mfdataset or sdf_xarray.open_mfdatatree

• Raw files: use sdf_xarray.sdf_interface.SDFFile

Using xarray

If you prefer using the native xarray functions, you can use the xarray.open_dataset, xarray.open_datatree and xarray.open_mfdataset. Strangely there is no function in xarray for xarray.open_mfdatatree.

These functions should all work out of the box as long as sdf_xarray is installed on your system, if you are having issues with it reading files, you might need to pass the parameter engine=sdf_engine when calling any of the above xarray functions.