pywaterinfo

Python package to download time series data from waterinfo.be

Description

pywaterinfo facilitates access to waterinfo.be, a website managed by the Flanders Environment Agency (VMM) and Flanders Hydraulics Research. The website provides access to real-time water and weather related environmental variables for Flanders (Belgium), such as rainfall, air pressure, discharge, and water level. The package provides functions to search for stations and variables, and download time series.

Check out the documentation website for more information.

Installation

pip install pywaterinfo

Example

To initialize data requests from VMM, setup the Waterinfo class with vmm as input:

from pywaterinfo import Waterinfo
vmm = Waterinfo("vmm")

The time series provided by waterinfo are all defined by a unique identifier called ts_id. Each combination of a given variable (e.g. air pressure) measured at a given location (e.g. Overpelt) with a certain frequency (e.g. 15min) is defined by an ts_id identifier. Using such an identifier, one can download the data of a given period with the command get_timeseries_values(). For example, the 15min air pressure time series at Overpelt has identifier ts_id = 78124042. To get last day of data for the time series with ID 78124042:

df = vmm.get_timeseries_values(78124042, period="P1D")

pywaterinfo returns the data as a Pandas DataFrame, which provides functionlities to plot and manipulate the time series.

Requesting data from from HIC is very similar:

hic = Waterinfo("hic")

Get last day of data for the time series with ID 39496010, corresponding to high-resolution (5min) conductivity measurements in Dendermonde:

df = hic.get_timeseries_values(ts_id="39496010", period="P1D")

Next to the request of time series data for a given time series identifier, other requests are supported as well. These functions provide multiple ways to search for the ts_id you need to download certain data. See the documentation website for more info.

Note on restrictions of the downloads

The amount of data downloaded from waterinfo.be is limited via a credit system. You do not need to get a token right away to download data. For limited and irregular downloads, a token will not be required.

When you require more extended data requests, please request a download token from the waterinfo.be site administrators via the e-mail address hydrometrie@waterinfo.be with a statement of which data and how frequently you would like to download data. You will then receive a client-credit code that can be used to obtain a token that is valid for 24 hours, after which the token can be refreshed with the same client-credit code. The handling of this token is done by the package itself, but it is important to use the code when initializing the Waterinfo instance. For example, using a VMM token:

from pywaterinfo import Waterinfo
vmm_token = "YOUR TOKEN CODE"
vmm = Waterinfo("vmm",  token=vmm_token)

Contribute

It's good practice to create a separate development environment for your package development. Use your preferred system (or maybe integrated in your IDE) to setup a Python environment and see those docs to setup an environment (conda, pyenv, virtualenv,,...). Once created, you can install all the developer dependencies using pip:

pip install -e .[develop]

You can do a local development install to start using the package. Activate your environment and run:

python setup.py develop

Tests are defined with pytest <https://docs.pytest.org>_. Write tests and run them using the command:

python setup.py test

Documentation lives in the docs directory and is setup using Sphinx package <http://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/master/>_. You can edit the documentation using any text editor and then generate the HTML output by with the command:

python setup.py build_sphinx

The resulting html files will be in the docs\_build\html folder. Double click the index.html to see the website on your local computer.

To keep the code formatting uniform, black <https://black.readthedocs.io/en/stable/index.html>_. is used to make the code styling as consistent as possible. Also a number of other checks are included in the pre-commit handle (flake check of PEP8 guidelines, limit committing large files, trailing whitespaces,...)

The required dependencies are part of the development requirements in the setup.cfg file, but make sure to install the pre-commit hook:

pre-commit install
pre-commit autoupdate

The Github actions CI job runs the unit tests, doctest, pre-commit checks and documentation building as well.

Acknowledgements

The package development and maintenance is supported by Fluves. Part of the initial development of this package has been supported by VITO.

This package is just a small wrapper around waterinfo.be to facilitate researchers and other stakeholders in downloading the data from waterinfo.be. The availability of this data is made possible by de Vlaamse Milieumaatschappij, Waterbouwkundig Laboratorium, Maritieme Dienstverlening & Kust, Waterwegen en Zeekanaal NV en De Scheepvaart NV.

Meta

• We welcome contributions including bug reports.
• License: MIT
• Please note that this project is released with a Contributor Code of Conduct. By participating in this project you agree to abide by its terms.

This project has been set up using PyScaffold 3.2.3. For details and usage information on PyScaffold see https://pyscaffold.org/.