Getting started#

Installation#

The dace-query package lets easily query DACE and access public and private data using a simple utility tool. The dace-query package is available on PyPi and can be installed using pip or conda :

# Install using pip
pip install dace-query

# Update using pip
pip install dace-query --upgrade

# Install using conda
# First, create a conda environment
conda create -n <env_name> python=3.9 # python version equal or upper than 3.9
# Second, activate the environment
conda activate <env_name>
# Finally, install using anaconda pip
pip install dace-query

Make sure the package is installed correctly :

# Import dace
import dace_query

# List content of the dace package
help(dace_query)

Authentication#

In order to access the private data of DACE, an authentication system has been implemented. This one works very simply, it just requires three things detailed in the following subsections:

Create an account#

Register on the DACE web portal with the university email address.

_images/create-account.png

Generate the DACE API key#

To obtain an API key:

  1. Login on DACE (https://dace.unige.ch)

  2. Go to the user profile

  3. Click on [Generate a new API key]

    _images/generate-api-key.png

  4. Copy this new API key into the .dacerc file

The .dacerc file#

The .dacerc file, (you have to create it), located by default in the home directory (~/.dacerc) and in TOML format, defines a user section with a key-value pair specifying the user’s API key (see below).

[user]
key = apiKey:<xxx-xxx-xxx>

For example, if your API key is 12345678-1234-5678-1234-567812345678, then the .dacerc file will be :

[user]
key = apiKey:12345678-1234-5678-1234-567812345678

To create the .dacerc file on Linux or macOs, open a terminal window and type :

printf '[user]\nkey = apiKey:%s\n' "your-api-key-here" > ~/.dacerc

Example usage#

# Import the ready-to-use exoplanet instance
from dace_query.exoplanet import Exoplanet

# Retrieve data from the exoplanet database
result: dict = Exoplanet.query_database(limit=10, output_format='dict')

# Get the planet names
planet_names: list = result.get('obj_id_catname')

# Print the planet names
print(planet_names)

For more examples of uses, such as filtering bad quality data (see Usage examples)

Contact#

In case of questions, proposals or problems, feel free to contact the DACE support .

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