Quickstart for the PDS API Python Client

This document can get you up to speed with the Python client to the PDS API.

Prerequisites

Python 3 (tested with 3.9).

Issues with SSL certificate verification seen with python 3.9.

If it occurs to you, try:

pip install –upgrade certifi

However, we have not been able to solve that with conda python 3.9.

Installation

To install the latest stable version of this package, run:

pip install pds.api-client

The package releases match with the Search API specification, as follows:

client implementation vs api specification versions

pds.api-client	pds search api specification
1.5.X	1.4
1.4.X	1.3
1.3.X	1.1.1
1.2.X	1.1.Y
1.1.X	1.0
0.8.Y	0.4

To install a specific version of this package, run, for example:

pip install pds.api-client==1.4.0

You can also include it as a dependency in another package, for example, in your install_requires.

Warning

If you use this package as a dependency, you cannot use pds as a top-level namespace package in your own software. Just use pds2 or anything else. This is a documented bug.

Create an API Connection

from __future__ import print_function
from pds.api_client.rest import ApiException
from pds.api_client import Configuration
from pds.api_client import ApiClient


# create an instance of the API class
configuration = Configuration()
configuration.host = 'https://pds.nasa.gov/api/search/1'
api_client = ApiClient(configuration)

Request One End Point

There are multiple API end points which accessible through modules defined in pds.api_client.api package

For Collections for example:

from pds.api_client.api.by_product_classes_api import ByProductClassesApi
from pprint import pprint

classes = ByProductClassesApi(api_client)

api_response = classes.class_list(
    'collections',
    start=0,
    limit=20,
    fields=['ops:Label_File_Info.ops:file_ref']
)
pprint(api_response.summary.to_dict())

Reference Documentation

See client_api