eccodes

This crate contains (mostly) safe high-level bindings for ecCodes library. Bindings can be considered safe mainly because all crate structures will take ownership of the data in memory before passing the raw pointer to ecCodes.

Currently only reading of GRIB files is supported.

Because of the ecCodes library API characteristics theses bindings are rather thick wrapper to make this crate safe and convenient to use.

This crate officially supports mainly Linux platforms same as the ecCodes library. But it is possible to install ecCodes on MacOS and this crate successfully compiles and all tests pass.

If you want to see more features released quicker do not hesitate to contribute and check out Github repository.

ecCodes is an open-source library for reading and writing GRIB and BUFR files developed by European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts.

Usage

ecCodes installation

This crate uses eccodes-sys with default options to link ecCodes. Check eccodes-sys website for more details on how it links the library.

The recommended way to install ecCodes on your computer is using your package manager. For example, on Ubuntu you can use apt-get:

sudo apt-get install libeccodes-dev

or brew on MacOS:

brew install eccodes

Alternatively, you can install the library manually from source in suitable directory following this instructions.

Then add the lib/pkgconfig directory from your ecCodes installation directory to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environmental variable. If ecCodes have been compiled as shared library you will also need to specify LD_LIBRARY_PATH. For example:

export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=<your_eccodes_path>/lib/pkgconfig
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=<your_eccodes_path>/lib

Working with GRIB files

To access a GRIB file you need to create CodesFile with one of the provided constructors.

ecCodes represents GRIB files as a set of separate messages, each containing data fields at specific time and level. Messages are represented here by a generic CodesMessage structure, but you shouldn't use it directly. Instead use RefMessage, ArcMessage or BufMessage to operations - check the docs for more information when to use each.

To obtain CodesMessage from CodesFile you need to create an instance of RefMessageIter or ArcMessageIter using CodesFile::ref_message_iter() or CodesFile::arc_message_iter(). Those structures implement FallibleIterator, please check its documentation if you are not familiar with it.

CodesMessage implements several methods to access the data as needed, most of those can be called directly. Almost all methods can be called on any CodesMessage, except for KeyWrite operations, which can be called only on BufMessage to avoid confusion if written keys are save to file or not.

Data contained by CodesMessage is represented as keys (like in dictionary). Keys can be read with static types using read_key() or with dynamic types using read_key_dynamic(). To discover what keys are present in a message use KeysIterator.

With ndarray feature (enabled by default) you can also read CodesMessage into ndarray using to_ndarray() and to_lons_lats_values().

You can use CodesNearest to get the data values of four nearest gridpoints for given coordinates.

To modify keys within the message use write_key_unchecked(). To save that modified message use write_to_file().

Example 1 - Reading GRIB file

In this example we are reading mean sea level pressure for 4 gridpoints nearest to Reykjavik (64.13N, -21.89E) for 1st June 2021 00:00 UTC from ERA5 Climate Reanalysis.

use eccodes::{CodesFile, FallibleIterator, KeyRead, ProductKind};

// Open the GRIB file and create the CodesFile
let mut handle = CodesFile::new_from_file("./data/iceland.grib", ProductKind::GRIB)?;
// Use iterator to find a message with shortName "msl" and typeOfLevel "surface"
// We can use while let or for_each() to iterate over the messages
while let Some(msg) = handle.ref_message_iter().next()? {
    // We need to specify the type of key we read
    let short_name: String = msg.read_key("shortName")?;
    let type_of_level: String = msg.read_key("typeOfLevel")?;
    if short_name == "msl" && type_of_level == "surface" {
        // Create CodesNearest for given message
        let nearest_gridpoints = msg
            .codes_nearest()?
            // Find the nearest gridpoints to Reykjavik
            .find_nearest(64.13, -21.89)?;
        // Print value and distance of the nearest gridpoint
        println!(
            "value: {}, distance: {}",
            nearest_gridpoints[3].value, nearest_gridpoints[3].distance
        );
    }
}

Multithreading

Since v0.14 messages inside a file can be read as ArcMessage which allows to move and share the message across threads.

Writing GRIB files

The crate provides a basic support for setting CodesMessage keys and writing GRIB files. The easiest (and safest) way to create a new custom message is to copy existing one from other GRIB file, modify the keys and write to new file.

You can find a detailed example of setting keys and writing message to file in the documentation.

Errors and panics

This crate aims to return error whenever possible, even if the error is caused by implementation bug. As ecCodes is often used in scientific applications with long and extensive jobs, this allows the user to handle the error in the way that suits them best and not risk crashes.

All error descriptions are provided in the [errors] module. Destructors, which cannot panic, report errors through tracing and log crate.

None of the functions in this crate explicitly panics. However, users should be aware that dependencies (eg. ndarray) might panic in some edge cases.

Safety

This crate aims to be as safe as possible and a lot of effort has been put into testing its safety. Moreover, pointers are always checked for null before being dereferenced.

That said, neither main developer nor contributors have expertise in unsafe Rust and bugs might have slipped through. We are also not responsible for bugs in the ecCodes library.

For critical applications always perform extensive testing before using this crate in production.

If you find a bug or have a suggestion, feel free to discuss it on Github.

Feature Flags

• ndarray - enables support for converting CodesMessage to [ndarray::Array]. This feature is enabled by default. It is currently tested only with simple lat-lon grids.

• docs - builds the crate without linking ecCodes, particularly useful when building the documentation on docs.rs. For more details check documentation of eccodes-sys.

To build your own crate with this crate as dependency on docs.rs without linking ecCodes add following lines to your Cargo.toml

[package.metadata.docs.rs]
features = ["eccodes/docs"]

License

The ecCodes library and these bindings are licensed under the Apache License Version 2.0