Feature to retrieve the underlying store

[stephenykp]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
It would be useful if I could retrieve the underlying store from an xarray Dataset object. There was previously a workaround that allowed this, but that was recently removed.

dataset._file_obj.ds  # Doesn't work anymore :(

Describe the solution you'd like
Ideally I'd like the API to be extended so the underlying store can be retrieved. Something like:

>>> dataset = xr.open_dataset('/path/to/file.nc')
>>> nc_dataset = dataset.store
>>> type(nc_dataset)
<class 'netCDF4._netCDF4.Dataset'>

Describe alternatives you've considered
I'd be fine using the old workaround if that was still an option. If anyone knows of a different workaround I would be fine with that, but a better long-term solution would be an actual user-facing function for accessing the store.

I might be using the 'store' terminology incorrectly, but hopefully my request is clear with the above example.

[kmuehlbauer]

AFAICT you could try to use ds._close to get the closing function(s) of the underlying file managers. Not sure if you then can lookup their parent-store(s) .

But you could open the store yourself, keep the reference and load it into a Dataset. Not sure if this would work for your use case, though.

[kmuehlbauer]

@skorper So, the workaround would be something along the lines:

>>> dataset = xr.open_dataset('/path/to/file.nc')
>>> nc_dataset = dataset._close.__self__.ds
>>> type(nc_dataset)
<class 'netCDF4._netCDF4.Dataset'>

But note, this only works if the dataset was opened/created from a single source file. And I'm not sure, if this is wanted behaviour.

@alexamici can possibly answer your question, if such API would be possible. To my understanding the backend refactor also did a great deal to disentangle Datasets from the underlying data sources. Please correct me @alexamici, if I'm wrong.

[stephenykp]

Thanks @kmuehlbauer! That works great for now.

[alexamici]

@kmuehlbauer precisely. For example the AbstractDataStore is not part of the API anymore and it is kept only for backward compatibility.

What I see missing is a way defined at API level for the backends to "attach" arbitrary information and possibly code to the backend Datasets. cc @shoyer @jhamman

[shoyer]

@skorper Could you kindly explain your use-case here? Why it is useful for you to retrieve underlying stores? :)

This has never been part of Xarray's supported public API, and unless that changes the present work-around could break again in the future without warning.

[kmuehlbauer]

It looks like that this is not going to be implemented any time soon.

But if you rely on access to the underlying store you might open the file using netCDF4-python/NetCDF4DataStore.

import netCDF4 as nc
import xarray as xr
with nc.Dataset(filename) as nds:
    store = xr.backends.NetCDF4DataStore(nds)
    with xr.open_dataset(store) as ds:
        print(ds)

Please feel free to reopen.