Using astropy.vo.client

This subpackage contains modules supporting VO client-side operations.

Catalog Manipulation

You can manipulate a VO catalog using VOSCatalog, which is basically a dictionary with added functionalities.

Examples

>>> from astropy.vo.client.vos_catalog import VOSCatalog

You can create a VO catalog from scratch with your own VO service by providing its title and access URL, and optionally any other metadata as key-value pairs:

>>> my_cat = VOSCatalog.create(
...     'My Own', 'http://ex.org/cgi-bin/cs.pl?',
...     description='My first VO service.', creator='J. Doe', year=2013)
>>> print(my_cat)
title: My Own
url: http://ex.org/cgi-bin/cs.pl?
>>> print(my_cat.dumps())
{
    "creator": "J. Doe",
    "description": "My first VO service.",
    "title": "My Own",
    "url": "http://ex.org/cgi-bin/cs.pl?",
    "year": 2013
}

You can modify and add fields:

>>> my_cat['year'] = 2014
>>> my_cat['new_field'] = 'Hello world'
>>> print(my_cat.dumps())
{
    "creator": "J. Doe",
    "description": "My first VO service.",
    "new_field": "Hello world",
    "title": "My Own",
    "url": "http://ex.org/cgi-bin/cs.pl?",
    "year": 2014
}

In addition, you can also delete an existing field, except the compulsory title and access URL:

>>> my_cat.delete_attribute('description')
>>> print(my_cat.dumps())
{
    "creator": "J. Doe",
    "new_field": "Hello world",
    "title": "My Own",
    "url": "http://ex.org/cgi-bin/cs.pl?",
    "year": 2014
}

Database Manipulation

You can manipulate VO database using VOSDatabase, which is basically a nested dictionary with added functionalities.

Examples

>>> from astropy.vo.client.vos_catalog import VOSDatabase

You can choose to start with an empty database:

>>> my_db = VOSDatabase.create_empty()
>>> print(my_db.dumps())
{
    "__version__": 1,
    "catalogs": {}
}

Add the custom catalog from VO catalog examples to database:

>>> my_db.add_catalog('My Catalog 1', my_cat)
>>> print(my_db)
My Catalog 1
>>> print(my_db.dumps())
{
    "__version__": 1,
    "catalogs": {
        "My Catalog 1": {
            "creator": "J. Doe",
            "new_field": "Hello world",
            "title": "My Own",
            "url": "http://ex.org/cgi-bin/cs.pl?",
            "year": 2014
        }
    }
}

You can write/read the new database to/from a JSON file:

>>> my_db.to_json('my_vo_database.json', clobber=True)
>>> my_db = VOSDatabase.from_json('my_vo_database.json')

You can also load a database from a VO registry. The process is described in Building the Database from Registry, except that here, validation is not done, so validate_xxx keys are not added. This might generate a lot of warnings, especially if the registry has duplicate entries of similar services, so here, we silently ignore all the warnings:

>>> import warnings
>>> from astropy.vo.validator.validate import CS_MSTR_LIST
>>> with warnings.catch_warnings():
...     warnings.simplefilter('ignore')
...     registry_db = VOSDatabase.from_registry(
...         CS_MSTR_LIST(), encoding='binary', cache=False)
Downloading http://vao.stsci.edu/directory/NVORegInt.asmx/...
|===========================================|  25M/ 25M (100.00%)        00s
>>> len(registry_db)
11937

Find catalog names containing 'usno*a2' in the registry database:

>>> usno_a2_list = registry_db.list_catalogs(pattern='usno*a2')
>>> usno_a2_list
[u'ROSAT All-Sky Survey Bright Source Catalog USNO A2 Cross-Associations 1',
 u'The USNO-A2.0 Catalogue (Monet+ 1998) 1',
 u'USNO-A2 Catalogue 1',
 u'USNO-A2.0 1',
 u'USNO-SA2.0 1']

Find access URLs containing 'stsci' in the registry database:

>>> stsci_urls = registry_db.list_catalogs_by_url(pattern='stsci')
>>> stsci_urls
['http://archive.stsci.edu/befs/search.php?',
 'http://archive.stsci.edu/copernicus/search.php?', ...,
 'http://galex.stsci.edu/gxWS/ConeSearch/gxConeSearch.aspx?',
 'http://gsss.stsci.edu/webservices/vo/ConeSearch.aspx?CAT=GSC23&']

Extract a catalog titled 'USNO-A2 Catalogue 1' from the registry:

>>> usno_a2 = registry_db.get_catalog('USNO-A2 Catalogue 1')
>>> print(usno_a2)
title: USNO-A2 Catalogue
url: http://www.nofs.navy.mil/cgi-bin/vo_cone.cgi?CAT=USNO-A2&

Extract a catalog by known access URL from the registry (the iterator version of this functionality is get_catalogs_by_url(), which is useful in the case of multiple entries with same access URL):

>>> gsc = registry_db.get_catalog_by_url(
...     'http://vizier.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/votable/-A?-source=I/305/out&')
>>> print(gsc)
title: The Guide Star Catalog, Version 2.3.2 (GSC2.3) (STScI, 2006)
url: http://vizier.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/votable/-A?-source=I/305/out&

Add all 'usno*a2' catalogs from registry to your database:

>>> for name, cat in registry_db.get_catalogs():
...     if name in usno_a2_list:
...         my_db.add_catalog(name, cat)
>>> my_db.list_catalogs()
[u'My Catalog 1',
 u'ROSAT All-Sky Survey Bright Source Catalog USNO A2 Cross-Associations 1',
 u'The USNO-A2.0 Catalogue (Monet+ 1998) 1',
 u'USNO-A2 Catalogue 1',
 u'USNO-A2.0 1',
 u'USNO-SA2.0 1']

You can delete a catalog from the database either by name or access URL:

>>> my_db.delete_catalog('USNO-SA2.0 1')
>>> my_db.delete_catalog_by_url(
...     'http://www.nofs.navy.mil/cgi-bin/vo_cone.cgi?CAT=USNO-A2&')
>>> my_db.list_catalogs()
[u'My Catalog 1',
 u'ROSAT All-Sky Survey Bright Source Catalog USNO A2 Cross-Associations 1',
 u'The USNO-A2.0 Catalogue (Monet+ 1998) 1',
 u'USNO-A2.0 1']

You can also merge two database together. In this example, the second database contains a simple catalog that only has given name and access URL:

>>> other_db = VOSDatabase.create_empty()
>>> other_db.add_catalog_by_url(
...     'My Guide Star Catalogue',
...     'http://vizier.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/votable/-A?-source=I/305/out&')
>>> print(other_db.dumps())
{
    "__version__": 1,
    "catalogs": {
        "My Guide Star Catalogue": {
            "title": "My Guide Star Catalogue",
            "url": "http://vizier.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/votable/-A?-source=I/305/out&"
        }
    }
}
>>> merged_db = my_db.merge(other_db)
>>> merged_db.list_catalogs()
[u'My Catalog 1',
 u'My Guide Star Catalogue',
 u'ROSAT All-Sky Survey Bright Source Catalog USNO A2 Cross-Associations 1',
 u'The USNO-A2.0 Catalogue (Monet+ 1998) 1',
 u'USNO-A2.0 1']

General VO Services Access

astropy.vo.client.vos_catalog also contains common utilities for accessing simple VO services already validated by STScI (see Validation for Simple Cone Search).

Configurable Items

These parameters are set via Configuration system (astropy.config):

Examples

>>> from astropy.vo.client import vos_catalog

Get all catalogs from a database named 'conesearch_good' (this contains cone search services that cleanly passed daily validations; also see Cone Search Examples):

>>> my_db = vos_catalog.get_remote_catalog_db('conesearch_good')
Downloading http://stsdas.stsci.edu/astrolib/vo_databases/conesearch_good.json
|============================================|  56/ 56k (100.00%)        00s
>>> print(my_db)
Guide Star Catalog 2.3 1
SDSS DR7 - Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7 1
SDSS DR7 - Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7 2
# ...
USNO-A2 Catalogue 1
USNO-A2.0 1

If you get timeout error, you need to use a custom timeout as follows:

>>> from astropy.utils import data
>>> with data.conf.set_temp('remote_timeout', 30):
...     my_db = vos_catalog.get_remote_catalog_db('conesearch_good')

To see validation warnings generated by Validation for Simple Cone Search for the one of the catalogs above:

>>> my_cat = my_db.get_catalog('Guide Star Catalog 2.3 1')
>>> for w in my_cat['validate_warnings']:
...     print(w)
/.../vo.xml:136:0: W50: Invalid unit string 'pixel'
/.../vo.xml:155:0: W48: Unknown attribute 'nrows' on TABLEDATA

By default, pedantic is False:

>>> from astropy.io.votable import conf
>>> conf.pedantic
False

To call a given VO service; In this case, a Cone Search (also see Cone Search Examples):

>>> from astropy import coordinates as coord
>>> from astropy import units as u
>>> c = coord.SkyCoord.from_name('47 Tuc')  
>>> c
<SkyCoord (ICRS): ra=6.0223292 deg, dec=-72.0814444 deg>
>>> sr = 0.5 * u.degree
>>> sr
<Quantity 0.5 deg>
>>> result = vos_catalog.call_vo_service(
...     'conesearch_good',
...     kwargs={'RA': c.ra.degree, 'DEC': c.dec.degree, 'SR': sr.value},
...     catalog_db='The PMM USNO-A1.0 Catalogue (Monet 1997) 1')
Trying http://vizier.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/votable/-A?-source=I/243/out&
Downloading ...
WARNING: W22: ... The DEFINITIONS element is deprecated in VOTable 1.1...
WARNING: W03: ... Implictly generating an ID from a name 'RA(ICRS)'...
WARNING: W03: ... Implictly generating an ID from a name 'DE(ICRS)'...
>>> result
<Table rows=36184 names=('_r','_RAJ2000','_DEJ2000', ...>

To repeat the above and suppress all the screen outputs (not recommended):

>>> import warnings
>>> with warnings.catch_warnings():
...     warnings.simplefilter('ignore')
...     result = vos_catalog.call_vo_service(
...         'conesearch_good',
...         kwargs={'RA': c.ra.degree, 'DEC': c.dec.degree, 'SR': sr.value},
...         catalog_db='The PMM USNO-A1.0 Catalogue (Monet 1997) 1',
...         verbose=False)

You can also use custom VO database, say, 'my_vo_database.json' from VO database examples:

>>> import os
>>> from astropy.vo.client.vos_catalog import BASEURL
>>> with BASEURL.set_temp(os.curdir):
...     try:
...         result = vos_catalog.call_vo_service(
...             'my_vo_database',
...             kwargs={'RA': c.ra.degree, 'DEC': c.dec.degree,
...                     'SR': sr.value})
...     except Exception as e:
...         print(e)
Trying http://ex.org/cgi-bin/cs.pl?
Downloading http://ex.org/cgi-bin/cs.pl?SR=0.5&DEC=-72.0814444&RA=6.0223292
|===========================================| 1.8k/1.8k (100.00%)        00s
None of the available catalogs returned valid results.