Python Data Converter

If you do not have Python already installed, please do so. We recommend installing Anaconda Python version 3.x .

Within the data directory, there is one python code (FIREreader.py) and a few example iPython notebooks. The notebooks use the python file to convert FIRE .hdf5 data into the format needed for Firefly.

FIREreader.py

This contains the FIREreader class that does all the heavy lifting. There are many options that you can set. Perhaps the best way to view all of the available options is to print the docstring :

$ python
>>> from FIREreader import FIREreader
>>> print(FIREreader.__doc__)

In practice, you probably don't want to edit this python code directly. Instead you can import this into an iPython notebook (or a stand-alone Python code), and set the options in the notebook.

In general, the FIREreader class will to the following:

• Read in the hdf5 files within the FIREreader.directory and FIREreader.snapnum location into a python dictionary.
• Save the keys from the dictionary that you define within the "returnKeys" parameter.
• Set options that will be used to display the data (e.g., the default particle sizes, colors, names, which data to include as Filters, etc.)
• Create the a new directory within your data directory, and place a number of .json files (e.g., FIREdataGas*.json) containing chunks of the full data set
• Create another .json file (e.g., FIREdataOptions.json) that stores the options you defined to customize the Firefly interface, and defaults.
• Create another .json file (filenames.json) that points Firefly to the rest of the data files.