Make it possible to provide token file locations when using rdams_client from within python

[nicholas512]

current behaviour

If I download the package using pip, I can't update the DEFAULT_AUTH_FILE location without directly modifying the code, and I can't pass a specific file location to functions like submit (i.e. the token_file parameter doesn't get passed to get_authentication)

This means I have to copy-paste the code locally into my repository and makes it difficult to

expected behaviour

After downloading the package using pip and importing it into python, I can specifiy a token_file location for use with submit and other functions

suggested solution 1

add a token_file parameter to functions that use get_authentication so that users can manually specify the token file location

e.g. for get_metadata:

def get_metadata(ds, token_file=DEFAULT_AUTH_FILE):
    """Return metadata of dataset.

    Args:
        ds (str): Datset id. e.g. 'ds083.2'

    Returns:
        dict: JSON decoded result of the query.
    """
    url = BASE_URL + 'metadata/'
    url += ds

    token = get_authentication(token_file)
    ret = requests.get(encode_url(url,token))

    check_status(ret)
    return ret.json()

suggested solution 2

Change the get_authentication file to dynamically fetch the token file from a class attribute if None is provided (see code below).

class Defaults:
    AUTH_FILE = "./rdams_token.txt"


def get_authentication(token_file=None):
    """Attempts to get authentication.

    Args:
        token_file (str): location of password file.

    Returns:
        (tuple): token
    """
    if token_file is None: 
        token_file = Defaults.AUTH_FILE
    if os.path.isfile(token_file) and os.path.getsize(token_file) > 0:
        return read_token_file(token_file)
    else:
        return get_userinfo()

Now, a user can monkey-patch the module as follows, because the default token file path doesn't get hard-coded into the function definition.

from rda_apps_clients import rdams_client
rdams_client.DEFAULT_AUTH_FILE = "/my/file/location.txt"