API Reference
The OpenRVDAS API Reference is the automatically-generated documentation for every OpenRVDAS logger component and server module: class signatures, constructor arguments, method docstrings and, where useful, the source itself.
It is the same documentation that is installed alongside the code, so if you
already have OpenRVDAS on a machine you can also browse it offline by opening
openrvdas/docs/html/index.html in a browser.
What’s covered
The reference documents the two Python packages that make up a running OpenRVDAS installation:
| Section | Contents |
|---|---|
| Readers | Components that acquire data: serial ports, UDP/TCP sockets, files, databases, Redis, MQTT, Modbus and more. |
| Transforms | Components that parse, filter, reformat, derive or otherwise manipulate records in flight. |
| Writers | Components that deliver records to files, databases, network sockets, InfluxDB, Grafana Live, email and elsewhere. |
| Utils | Shared helpers: record formats, timestamps, NMEA/record parsing, and the DASRecord class. |
| Listener | The machinery behind listen.py, which chains readers, transforms and writers together. |
| Server | Logger manager, logger runner/supervisor, the cached data server, the websocket server and the server APIs. |
For a narrative introduction to how these fit together, start with Introduction to Loggers and OpenRVDAS Components; the API reference is where you go once you know which component you want and need its exact arguments.
How it’s generated
The reference is built with pdoc directly from the
docstrings in the OpenRVDAS source tree, by docs/generate_html_docs.sh in the
OpenRVDAS repository. That
repository regenerates it automatically when logger or server code changes, and
this site picks up the current master version each time it is rebuilt.
Because it is generated from source, the reference reflects the code rather than this handbook: if a component’s docstring is thin, the reference will be thin too. Improvements are welcome as pull requests against the docstrings themselves.
Searching
Every page in the reference carries a search box that indexes the full API across all modules, and the left-hand sidebar lists the classes and methods on the page you are reading. The site search at the top of this page covers the handbook only, so use the reference’s own search when you are looking for a class or argument name.