Additional Functionality

This section provides information on some additional functionality of the API that is not specific to any single class.

Difference and equivalence methods

When working with the API, it is often useful to understand whether two instances of a class are equal, or if not, what the differences are. In general, the API considers two instances equal if they contain the exact same data and therefore would write the same output. Some attributes such as the filepath do not need to be the same for them to be considered equal.

Two instances of the same class can now be tested using == to check whether they are equal.

dat_a = DAT('some_network.dat')
dat_b = DAT('another_similar_network.dat')

if dat_a == dat_b:  # returns True/False
    print('Files are equivalent')
else:
    print('Files not equivalent')

In addition, a detailed breakdown of any differences can be found using the .diff() method:

dat_a.diff(dat_b)  # prints a list of differences to terminal

Currently, the == and .diff() methods is supported for the following classes:

• DAT

• IED

• IEF

• INP

• XML2D

• All 1D River Unit classes

File Backups

The API automatically backs up any data files you load via the DAT, IED, IEF, INP and XML2D classes. The files are backed up in your OS temporary directory (see tempfile.gettempdir()). You can restore backups via the the .file.restore() method. Currently this restores the latest backup, but if you want to restore a specific backup then you list the backups and navigate to the file via the os file directory.

# Load the DAT
# Automatically backs up the file if it has changes since the last backup
dat = DAT("a_dat_file.DAT")
# List the available backups
backups = dat.file.list_backups()
# Restore the latest backup to a file
backups[0].restore(to = "restore-file.DAT")
# Restore an older backup
backups[6].restore(to = "restore-file.DAT")

JSON methods

Any flood modeller object can be converted to a JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) string, and vice versa. To convert to JSON, simply call the .to_json() method on any API class to return a valid json string. Conversely, any valid json string produced by the API can be converted back into its equivalent API instance using the .from_json() constructor on any API class.

To convert a flood modeller object to a JSON string:

dat = DAT('some_network.dat')

obj_json = dat.to_json()

To convert a JSON file to a flood modeller object:

dat = DAT.from_json(json_string)

To convert a single River Section unit to JSON:

dat = DAT("some_network.dat")
river_unit_json = dat.sections["some_unit"].to_json()