Scitacean

Scitacean is a high-level Python package for downloading and uploading datasets from and to SciCat.

To get started, read the User Guide.

Why Scitacean?

Scitacean abstracts away the SciCat REST API and makes it usable via a small number of Python functions. However, it is not the only package that does so. In particular Pyscicat has a similar but lower-level abstraction. Compared to Pyscicat, Scitacean offers:

• An easier to use and harder to misuse interface.

• Combined handling of metadata and files.

• Automated handling of a number of fields and some database details like data blocks.

• Basic validation of metadata.

• File upload and download utilities.

While Scitacean provides access to a lower level interface similar to Pyscicat, it only supports a small subset of the SciCat API. Consider using Pyscicat if you need to access data that is not exposed through Scitacean.

Installation

Project based

uv

To add Scitacean from pypi.org:

uv add scitacean

If you need to transfer files via SFTP, i.e., with scitacean.transfer.sftp.SFTPFileTransfer, specify the sftp:

uv add scitacean --extra sftp

Pixi

To add Scitacean from conda-forge:

pixi add scitacean

In contrast to to Pip package used by uv, this always installs the dependencies for SFTP. So no additional steps are needed to use scitacean.transfer.sftp.SFTPFileTransfer.

Environment based

Pip

Scitacean is available on pypi.org:

python -m pip install scitacean

If you need to transfer files via SFTP, i.e., with scitacean.transfer.sftp.SFTPFileTransfer, specify the sftp extra when installing:

python -m pip install "scitacean[sftp]"

Conda

Scitacean is available on conda-forge:

conda install -c conda-forge scitacean

In contrast to installing with Pip, this always installs the dependencies for SFTP. So no additional steps are needed to use scitacean.transfer.sftp.SFTPFileTransfer.