Serializing CSDM object to fileĀ¶

An instance of a CSDM object is serialized as a csdf/csdfe JSON-format file with the save() method. When serializing the dependent-variable from the CSDM object to the data-file, the csdmpy module uses the value of the dependent variableā€™s encoding attribute to determine the encoding type of the serialized data. There are three encoding types for the dependent variables:

  • none

  • base64

  • raw

Note

By default, all instances of DependentVariable from a CSDM object are serialized as base64 strings.

For the following examples, consider data as an instance of the CSDM class.

To serialize a dependent variable with a given encoding type, set the value of itā€™s encoding attribute to the respective encoding. For example,

As ``none`` encoding

>>> data.dependent_variables[0].encoding = "none"
>>> data.save('my_file.csdf')

The above code will serialize the dependent variable at index zero to a JSON file, my_file.csdf, where each component of the dependent variable is serialized as an array of JSON number.

As ``base64`` encoding

>>> data.dependent_variables[0].encoding = "base64"
>>> data.save('my_file.csdf')

The above code will serialize the dependent variable at index zero to a JSON file, my_file.csdf, where each component of the dependent variable is serialized as a base64 string.

As ``raw`` encoding

>>> data.dependent_variables[0].encoding = "raw"
>>> data.save('my_file.csdfe')

The above code will serialize the metadata from the dependent variable at index zero to a JSON file, my_file.csdfe, which includes a link to an external file where the components of the respective dependent variable are serialized as a binary array. The binary file is named, my_file_0.dat, where my_file is the filename from the argument of the save method, and 0 is the index number of the dependent variable from the CSDM object.

Multiple encoding types

In the case of multiple dependent-variables, you may choose to serialize each dependent variables with a different encoding, for example,

>>> my_data.dependent_variables[0].encoding = "raw"
>>> my_data.dependent_variables[1].encoding = "base64"
>>> my_data.dependent_variables[2].encoding = "none"
>>> my_data.dependent_variables[3].encoding = "base64"
>>> my_data.save('my_file.csdfe')

In the above example, my_data is a CSDM object containing four DependentVariable objects. Here, we serialize the dependent variable at index two with none, the dependent variables at index one and three with bae64, and the dependent variables at index zero with raw encoding, respectively.

Note

Because an instance of the dependent variable, that is, the index zero in the above example, is set to be serialized with an external subtype, the corresponding file should be saved with a .csdfe extension.