Autoplot's Support for the HAPI (Heliophysics Application Programmer’s) Interface

Jeremy Faden, Self Employed, Washington, DC, United States, Robert S Weigel, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, United States and Jon Duane Vandegriff, Johns Hopkins Univ, Laurel, MD, United States
Abstract:
Autoplot is software with the primary goal of plotting scientific data used in space physics. It does this by adapting data from various file formats and server APIs, located with data URIs, into a standard internal data representation called QDataSet. Autoplot supports reading data from HAPI data servers, which use the Heliophysics Application Programmer’s Interface to transmit data from different servers using a common interface. This improves interoperability, and allows data providers to implement servers without having to implement client software or to document APIs with the hopes that clients will come. The goal with Autoplot's HAPI support is to provide a rich and easy access to servers, providing client-side caching so that data requests are minimized. Autoplot also provides a Jython programming environment where scripts can be run to create new science analysis.

Since Autoplot uses a standard data representation internally, it is well-suited to support use in servers as well. A command-line interface is provided which will take Autoplot URIs and provide corresponding HAPI responses. This allows servers to be developed quickly, with little coding.

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