Create your own file handler

Introduction

File handlers are objects that can read or write files in a specific format. The formats can be very common like NetCDF4 or very specified ones like the one from SEVIRI HDF level 1.5 files. File handlers are required by the FileSet object to load data from files or to store data back to files. File handlers can provide up to three things:

  • Reading of files and returning their content.

  • Writing data to files in a specific format.

  • Getting information about a file that cannot be retrieved from the file

    name.

File handlers for the most common and some specific instrument formats are already included in the typhon package; have a look at Handlers.

However, it might happen that you need to build your own file handler object. This tutorial shows to you how one should do it.

Basis structure

Your file handler needs a read, write and a get_info method even if it does not implement all of them.

FileHandler method

Description

FileHandler.read()

Opens and reads a file.

FileHandler.write()

Writes data to a file.

FileHandler.get_info()

Gets information (e.g. time coverage) of a file.

The best start is to inherit from the generic FileHandler object:

1# Import the file handler base class
2from typhon.files import FileHandler
3
4class YourFileHandler(FileHandler):
5     pass

Reading of files

To provide reading, you need to implement a read method. It should take a FileInfo object as a first argument and return an object that holds the read content of the file (e.g. a xarray.Dataset).

1# Import the file handler base class
2from typhon.files import FileHandler
3
4class YourFileHandler(FileHandler):
5     def read(self, file_info):
6         """Simple reader that returns the first line of an ASCII file"""
7         with open(file_info) as file:
8             return file.readline()

to be continued