Universal read_header function

[telegraphic]

As discussed in #60, it may be useful to have a universal read_header() function that works on all file types. Starting this issue for discussion, this certainly relates to the roadmap discussion #38 but could be implemented pretty easily.

[dan-rds]

This looks interesting, I'll give it a shot. Few questions though:

1. Do we want it to work like Waterfall(<file path>).info but a class with getters instead of printing?
2. What are the fields that every header should have?
3. What does "all file types" include? .h5 .fi .raw (guppi) anything else? I saw in Blimpy roadmap discussion #38 there was vague talk about other file types, what is worth the work?
4. Where can I find a raw guppi file along with any other files from Python3 support #3 (I think my account at gbt has lapsed)

[dan-rds]

@telegraphic

[telegraphic]

Hey @dan-rds -- basically this meant to recreate https://github.com/UCBerkeleySETI/blimpy/blob/master/blimpy/io/sigproc.py#L160 for hdf5 files also.

So add to HDF5 file reading a utility:

def read_header(filename, return_idxs=False):
    """ Read blimpy header and return a Python dictionary of key:value pairs
    Args:
        filename (str): name of file to open
    Optional args:
        return_idxs (bool): Default False. If true, returns the file offset indexes
                            for values
    returns: dictionary of key:value pairs
    """

We would want to be able to do from blimpy.io import read_header too, so could be added to the __init__.py in /io directory.

[telegraphic]

Just had a look at the file_wrapper.py, there is a read_header function in the class defintion

blimpy/blimpy/io/file_wrapper.py

Line 384 in ebce506

def read_header(self):

So I would move this from the class into a new file hdf.py, then import that in file_wrapper. Or something like that

[dan-rds]

That's all?

[telegraphic]

pretty much!