Catalog and manifest¶

This document describes the catalog format and the manifest format. The catalog file collects computed simulations for the visualizaion server and points to the manifest file for each simulation. The manifest contains postprocessed rasters pertaining to a single simulation.

Catalog¶

The file catalog.json in the root visualization directory of the wrfxweb visualization system is a JSON file which stores the following information about each simulation:

manifest_path : [string] the path to the manifest string
description : [string] a description that is shown in the selection menu to a user
from_utc : [esmf_time] the start time of the simulation in ESMF format
to_utc : [esmf_time] the end time of the simulation in ESMF format

Example:

{
  "patch_fire": {
    "manifest_path": "patch3/patch.json",
    "description": "Patch Springs Fire [UT]",
    "to_utc": "2013-08-19_09:00:00",
    "from_utc": "2013-08-11_00:00:00"
  },
  "test_fire_3": {
    "manifest_path": "test_fire_3/wfc-two-domain-fire.json",
    "description": "2-domain test fire, viscosity=0",
    "to_utc": "2016-04-08_23:00:00",
    "from_utc": "2016-04-08_18:00:00"
  },
  .
  .
  .
}

Manifest¶

The manifest file is a JSON file that collects information on which domains, timestamps and variables are generated from a simulation. The top-level object is a dictionary keyed by string domain identifier (“1”, “2”, …) and contains an object keyed by ESMF time (“2016-03-30_00:00:00”, …) which in turn contains a dictionary keyed by variable names (e.g. “T2”, “WINDVEC”, …). The postprocessing results for each variable are represented by dictionary keys as follows:

colobar : [string] (optional) path to the colorbar, if any
raster : [string] path to the display raster (PNG file)
kml : [string] (optional) path to the KMZ file for possible download
coords : [string] the corner coordinates of the PNG file (geolocation)

An partial example of one variable in a file is below:

{
  "1" : {
    .
    .
    "2016-03-30_16:15:00" : {
    .
    .
      "FMC_G": {
        "colorbar": "patch-2013-08-14_12:00:00-FMC_G-cb.png",
        "raster": "patch-2013-08-14_12:30:00-FMC_G-raster.png",
        "kml": "patch-2013-08-14_12:30:00-FMC_G.kmz",
        "coords": [
            [ -113.15496826171875, 39.978614807128906 ],
            [ -112.26193237304688, 39.978614807128906 ],
            [ -112.26193237304688, 40.65946960449219 ],
            [ -113.15496826171875, 40.65946960449219 ]
        ]
      }
    }
  }
}