Function: list

Definition

From the whole database or a selection of profiles, this function outputs the list of unique occurrences of a profile property specified by the option 'of'. Thus the function 'list' must be used along with option 'of', otherwise an error message will be obtained. Property names that can be listed are:

  • dac: Data Assembly Center name
  • dmode: Data Mode (R, D or A)
  • wmo: World Meteorological Organization unique float ID
  • cyc: Profile's cycle number
  • year: Profile's year
  • month: Profile's month (1 to 12)
  • ticket: Is a ticket filled or not for profiles (0 or 1)
  • area: Profile's coordinate area code (0, 1 or 2)
  • pres, temp, psal, doxy: Profile's availability of parameter (0 or 1)
  • pres_qc, temp_qc, psal_qc, doxy_qc: Profile's quality flag of parameter (A, B, C, D, E, F or empty)
  • file: GDAC ftp netcdf profile file location

Default output format

The default output is a JSON table with all unique occurrences of the required properties as string. Even if properties are boolean or numerical they are formatted as strings in the JSON output.

Examples

Using the whole database, to obtain the list of all possible Data Assembly Name:

?get=list&of=dac

This query can produce the following output:

Options

The unique option of this function is 'of', which is not really an option because mandatory to obtain a valid output.

Other output format

To specify an output format different than JSON, simply use the format restriction followed by either: matlab or csv.

Matlab

For instance, to obtain the list of all possible Data Assembly Name in Matlab format:

?get=list&of=dac&format=matlab

This query can produce the following output:

which is a cell with all possible values in rows. To learn how to use the API from Matlab, see the 'Using the API from Matlab' section.

Coma Separated Values (CSV)

The csv output format will prompt the user to download a text file with a coma separated list of the results (after the commented header). For instance, querying the API with the following:

?get=list&of=dac&format=csv

produces a file which contains:

where each DAC name has an unique ID for easy sorting.