Customization and Global Configuration

The config.yml file

This package uses a config.yml configuration file to customize certain properties. You can control a number of key features such as where your data will download to. SWxSOC packages look for this configuration file in a platform-specific directory, which you can see the path for by running:

>>> import swxsoc
>>> swxsoc.print_config()

Using your own config.yml file

To maintain your own customizations, you must place your customized config.yml inside the appropriate configuration folder (which is based on the operating system you are working on). The AppDirs module provided by the sunpy package is used to determine where to look for your configuration file.

Warning

Do not edit the config.yml file directly in the Python package as it will get overwritten every time you re-install or update the package.

You can copy the file below, customize it, and then place your customized config.yml file inside your config folder.

If you work in our developer environment you can place your configuration file in this directory:

/home/vscode/.config/swxsoc/

You can also specify the configuration directory by setting the environment variable SWXSOC_CONFIGDIR to the path of your configuration directory. For example, you can set the environment variable in your terminal by running:

export SWXSOC_CONFIGDIR=/path/to/your/config/dir

If you do not use our developer environment, you can run the following code to see where to place it on your specific machine as well:

>>> from swxsoc import util
>>> from pathlib import Path
>>> Path(util.config._get_user_configdir()).name
'swxsoc'

Note

For more information on where to place your configuration file depending on your operating system, you can refer to the AppDirs module docstrings.

Customizing the Mission Configuration

The configuration file supports keeping multiple mission configurations. You must select one mission to be used either directly in the configuration file or via an environmental variable.

In the config.yml file, you can specify the mission by setting the selected_mission variable. Here is an example snippet from a config.yml file:

selected_mission: "mission_name"
missions_data:
  mission_name:
    file_extension: ".txt"
    instruments:
      - name: "Instrument1"
        shortname: "Inst1"
        fullname: "Instrument 1"
        targetname: "Target 1"
      - name: "Instrument2"
        shortname: "Inst2"
        fullname: "Instrument 2"
        targetname: "Target 2"

You can override the selected mission by setting the SWXSOC_MISSION environment variable. This is useful for scenarios such as running in different environments (e.g., Lambda containers). For example:

export SWXSOC_MISSION=another_mission

Reconfiguring for Testing

For testing purposes, you might need to reload the configuration after making changes to the config.yml file. You can use the _reconfigure function to reload the configuration during your testing process. This function reloads the configuration and updates the global config variable.

from swxsoc import _reconfigure

# Make changes to the config.yml file
# ...

# Reconfigure the module to reload the configuration
_reconfigure()

To learn more about how to set up your development environment, see Developer Environment.