Installing a Package

Searching for packages

As explained in "Building a Package", packages are managed using registries. There is a one local registry on your machine, and potentially many remote registries elsewhere "in the world". Use list_packages to see the packages available on a registry:

$ python
>>> import t4

>>> t4.list_packages()  # list local packages

PACKAGE                            TOPHASH        CREATED        SIZE
namespace/packagename:latest       cac145b9c3dc   just now       2.4 GB
othernamespace/packagename:latest  95a134c80z48   14 days ago    2.4 GB

>>> t4.list_packages("s3://my-bucket")  # list remote packages

PACKAGE                            TOPHASH        CREATED        SIZE
user1/seattle-weather:latest       cac145b9c3dc   1 hour ago     2.4 GB
user2/new-york-ballgames:latest    95a134c80z48   6 days ago     2.4 GB

Installing a package

To make a remote package and all of its data available locally, install it.

import t4
p = t4.Package.install(
    "username/packagename",
    "s3://your-bucket",
)

Installing a package downloads all of the data and populates an entry for the package in your local registry.

You can omit registry if you configure a default remote registry (this will persists between sessions):

t4.config(default_remote_registry='s3://your-bucket')

# this now 'just works'
t4.Package.install("username/packagename")

Data files that you download are written to a folder in your local registry by default. You can specify an alternative destination using dest:

t4.Package.install("username/packagename", dest="./")

Finally, you can install a specific version of a package by specifying the corresponding top hash:

t4.Package.install("username/packagename", top_hash="abcd1234")

Browsing a package manifest

An alternative to install is browse. browse downloads a package manifest without also downloading the data in the package.

import t4

# load a package manifest from a remote registry
p  = t4.Package.browse("username/packagename", "s3://your-bucket")

# load a package manifest from the default remote registry
p  = t4.Package.browse("username/packagename")

# load a package manifest from the local registry
p = t4.Package.browse("username/packagename", "local")

browse is advantageous when you don't want to download everything in a package at once. For example if you just want to look at a package's metadata.

Importing a package

You can import a local package from within Python:

from t4.data.username import packagename

This allows you to manage your data and code dependencies all in one place in your Python scripts or Jupyter notebooks.