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API Usage

To use the bossdata package in your own python projects, you will normally start with:

import bossdata
finder = bossdata.path.Finder()
mirror = bossdata.remote.Manager()

This code will use the environment variables $BOSS_SAS_PATH, $BOSS_REDUX_VERSION, $BOSS_DATA_URL and $BOSS_LOCAL_ROOT to configure your access to SDSS data files (see /envvar for details.) The finder and mirror objects can be used together to access locally mirrored copies of BOSS data files. For example:

remote_path = finder.get_spec_path(plate=4567, mjd=55589, fiber=88, lite=True)
local_path = mirror.get(remote_path)

Refer to the API documentation </api> for details on using the bossdata.path and bossdata.remote modules.

Certain data files have a helper class for accessing their contents:
  • spec,spec-lite: bossdata.spec.SpecFile
  • plate: bossdata.plate.PlateFile
  • plan: bossdata.plate.Plan
  • frame,cframe: bossdata.plate.FrameFile

For example, to open the spec-lite file used in the example above, use:

spec = bossdata.spec.SpecFile(local_path)

The pattern for accessing large metadata files is somewhat different, and handled by the bossdata.meta.Database class.