Reading PI to Cds Values from Sequential Data Store Python Sample

Version: 1.0.5

Building a Python client to make REST API calls to the SDS Service

The sample code in this topic demonstrates how to invoke SDS REST APIs using Python to read values from a stream in SDS created from a PI to Cds transfer. By examining the code, you will see how to establish a connection to SDS, obtain an authorization token, and query SDS for values.

The sections that follow provide a brief description of the process from beginning to end.

Note: This sample requires an Id of a PI to Cds stream already created in SDS.

Developed against Python 3.10.1

To Run this Sample

1. Clone the GitHub repository
2. Install required modules: pip install -r requirements.txt
3. Open the folder with your favorite IDE
4. Configure the sample using the file appsettings.placeholder.json. Before editing, rename this file to appsettings.json. This repository's .gitignore rules should prevent the file from ever being checked in to any fork or branch, to ensure credentials are not compromised.
5. Update appsettings.json with the credentials provided by AVEVA
6. Run program.py

To Test the sample:

1. Run python test.py

or

1. Install pytest pip install pytest
2. Run pytest program.py

PI Tag Name to Cds Stream Id

Streams in SDS are referred to by their Id rather than by their name as is common with PI tags. To find the PI to Cds stream corresponding to your PI tag name in SDS, you can search in the SDS portal using the following format:

ID:PI_<YOUR_SERVER_NAME>_* AND Name:<PI_TAG_NAME>

The SDS portal can be found by navigating to the Cloud Portal and visiting the Sequential Data Store option under the Data Management tab on the left hand menu, where you can find the search bar in the top center.

To do this programatically you can use the getStreams method, for more information see the Retrieve Streams by Query section below.

Establish a Connection

The sample code uses the samples library which uses the requests module, which exposes simple methods for specifying request types to a given destination address. This library automatically adds the Accept-Encoding header to requests and decompresses encoded responses before returning them to the user, so no special handling is required to support compression. The client calls the requests method by passing a destination URL, payload, and headers. The server's response is stored.

response = requests.post(url, data=payload, headers=client_headers)

• url is the service endpoint (for example: https://uswe.datahub.connect.aveva.com). The connection is used by the SdsClient class.

Each call to the SDS REST API consists of an HTTP request along with a specific URL and HTTP method. The URL consists of the server name plus the extension that is specific to the call. Like all REST APIs, the SDS REST API maps HTTP methods to CRUD operations as shown in the following table:

HTTP Method	CRUD Operation	Content Found In
POST	Create	message body
GET	Retrieve	URL parameters
PUT	Update	message body
DELETE	Delete	URL parameters

Note: Only the GET method will be used in this sample as it targets clients limited to read permissions, the Cds waveform sample is available and more in depth to cover every HTTP method.

Configure the Sample

Included in the sample there is a configuration file with placeholders that need to be replaced with the proper values. They include information for authentication, connecting to the SDS Service, pointing to a namespace, and retrieving stream data.

CONNECT data services

First, a valid namespace Id for the tenant must be given. In SDS, a namespace provides isolation within a Tenant. Each namespace has its own collection of Streams, Types, and Stream Views. It is not possible to programmatically create or delete a namespace. If you are a new user, be sure to go to the Cloud Portal and create a namespace using your tenant login credentials provided by AVEVA. You must provide the namespace Id of a valid namespace in appsettings.json for the sample to function properly.

The SDS Service is secured using Azure Active Directory. The sample application is an example of a credential client. Credential clients provide a client Id and secret that are authenticated against the directory and are associated with a given tenant. They are created through the tenant's Security portal. The steps necessary to create a new client Id and secret are described below.

Log on to the Cloud Portal and navigate to the Clients page under the Security tab, which is situated along left of the webpage. This sample program covers data retrieval, so the client provided needs to have access to said data.

To create a new client, click Add Client in the top pane of the page and follow the prompts, ensuring that the appropriate roles are assigned to allow the client to read values from the PI to Cds stream to be used.

To create a new secret for a client, select the client and click the Add Secret button under the client details pane then follow the prompts. Note that the secret is only displayed at the time of creation and cannot be retrieved at a later time.

Finally, a query string to retrieve the stream to read from must be given. For more information on how to define this see Search in SDS

Config Schema

The values to be replaced are in appsettings.json:

{
  "Resource": "https://uswe.datahub.connect.aveva.com",
  "ApiVersion": "v1",
  "TenantId": "PLACEHOLDER_REPLACE_WITH_TENANT_ID",
  "NamespaceId": "PLACEHOLDER_REPLACE_WITH_NAMESPACE_ID",
  "CommunityId": null,
  "ClientId": "PLACEHOLDER_REPLACE_WITH_APPLICATION_IDENTIFIER",
  "ClientSecret": "PLACEHOLDER_REPLACE_WITH_APPLICATION_SECRET",
  "StreamId": "PLACEHOLDER_REPLACE_WITH_STREAM_ID"
}

Community

If you are accessing a stream shared in an Cds community, enter the community Id in the CommunityId field of the configuration. Make sure to also grant the appropriate "Community Member" role to the Client-Credentials Client used by the sample.

If you are not using Cds communities, leave the CommunityId field blank.

Obtain an Authentication Token

Within each request to SDS, the headers are provided by a function that is also responsible for refreshing the token. An authentication context is created and a token is acquired from that context.

tokenInformation = requests.post(
tokenEndpoint,
data = {"client_id" : self.clientId,
        "client_secret" : self.clientSecret,
        "grant_type" : "client_credentials"})

token = json.loads(tokenInformation.content)

This is handled by the python library.

Retrieve Stream

To run this sample we will need to first retrieve the PI to Cds stream to read values from. This is done by calling the getStream method providing the Id of the stream to retrieve. The stream Id is configured in the appsettings.json file as StreamId.

getStream is used for retrieving a stream and its information. This is the function definition:

getStream(self, namespace_id, stream_id):

• namespace_id is the Id of the namespace to query against.

• stream_id is the Id of the stream to retrieve.

• A JSON object containing the stream is returned.

The method is called as shown:

stream = client.Streams.getStream(self, namespace_id, stream_id)

Retreive Streams by Query

If you would like to query SDS for multiple streams we can use the getStreams method providing a query parameter. This could be used to find PI to Cds streams given your PI tag and PI Server names as shown earlier by providing the same query format, ID:PI_<YOUR_SERVER_NAME>_* AND Name:<PI_TAG_NAME>. Following is the function definition:

streams = getStreams(self, namespace_id, query, skip, count):

namespace_id: is the Id of the namespace to query against. query: is the query to use. skip: is the number of streams to skip for paging. count: is the number of streams to limit to.

• A JSON object containing an array of streams is returned.

Retrieve Values from a Stream

The SDS read API features different methods of reading values, in this sample we will demonstrate reading Window, Range, and Filtered values, as well as using Interpolation.

PI to Cds Stream properties

When ingressing data using PI to Cds, the resulting stream types contain a certain set of PI point attributes as stream type properties to give more information about the data:

Column	Description
IsQuestionable	The event value is unreliable or the circumstances under which it was recorded are suspect
IsSubstituted	The event value has been changed from the original archived value
IsAnnotated	An annotation has been made to the event to include further information or commentary
SystemStateCode	The system digital state code
DigitalStateName	The digital state name

The amount of information included can be managed by setting the verbosity, which we will show in more detail below.

These stream types are created automatically by the PI to Cds transfer, but are regular SDS types at their core. API calls used in this sample also apply to user defined SDS types, for examples using user defined types see the SDS Waveform samples.

Verbosity

SDS read APIs supports an accept-verbosity header that will set whether verbose output should be excluded. A value is considered verbose if it is the default value for its type, such as false for a boolean, null for a string, etc. The following example output demonstrates responses for the same call using verbose and non-verbose values:

accept-verbosity = verbose

{
  "Timestamp": "2021-12-15T01:39:05Z",
  "Value": 98.30506,
  "IsQuestionable": false,
  "IsSubstituted": true,
  "IsAnnotated": false,
  "SystemStateCode": null,
  "DigitalStateName": null
}

accept-verbosity = non-verbose

{
  "Timestamp": "2021-12-15T01:39:05Z",
  "Value": 98.30506,
  "IsSubstituted": true,
}

Note that since IsSubstituted is True it is still included in both responses while the other values are excluded when not accepting verbose values.

When using the python sample library, this option is configurable when creating the ADHClient object by providing True or False for the accept_verbosity constructor parameter, or by calling the setter method

client.acceptverbosity = False

This can also be observed using the API Console in Data Hub by clicking the 'Headers' button and toggling the 'Accept-Verbosity' setting.

Get Window Values

getWindowValues is used for retrieving events over a specific index range. This is the function definition:

def getWindowValues(self, namespace_id, stream_id, value_class, start, end):

• start and end (inclusive) represent the indices for the retrieval.
• The namespace Id and stream Id must be provided to the function call.
• A JSON object containing a list of the found values is returned.

The method is called as shown :

values = client.Streams.getWindowValues(namespaceId, stream.Id, None, 0, 40)

You can also retrieve the values in the form of a table (in this case with headers). Here is how to use it:

def getWindowValuesForm(self, namespace_id, stream_id, value_class, start, end, form)

• start and end (inclusive) represent the indices for the retrieval.
• The namespace Id and stream Id must be provided to the function call.
• form specifies the organization of a table, the two available formats are table and header table

Here is how it is called:

values = sdsClient.Streams.getWindowValuesForm(namespaceId, stream.Id, None, 0, 180,"tableh")

Get Range Values

getRangeValues is used for retrieving a specified number of events from a starting index. The starting index is the Id of the SdsTypeProperty that corresponds to the key value of the type. Here is the request:

def getRangeValues(self, namespace_id, stream_id, value_class, start, skip, count, reversed, boundary, streamView_id=""):

• start is the increment by which the retrieval will happen.
• count is how many values you wish to have returned.
• reversed is a boolean that when true causes the retrieval to work backwards from the starting point.
• boundary is a SdsBoundaryType value that determines the behavior if the starting index cannot be found. Refer the to the SDS documentation for more information about SdsBoundaryTypes.

The getRangeValues method is called as shown :

values = sdsClient.Streams.getRangeValues(namespaceId, stream.Id, None, "1", 0, 3, False, SdsBoundaryType.ExactOrCalculated)

Additional Methods

Note that there are more methods provided in the SdsClient than are discussed in this document, for a complete list of HTTP request URLs refer to the SDS documentation.

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Automated test uses Python 3.9.1 x64

Note: Testing the sample by running the test.py module requires a Client with access to Create and Delete SDS Types and Streams

For the main PI to Cds read only stream samples page ReadMe For the main Cds samples page ReadMe
For the main AVEVA samples page ReadMe