Saving snapshot as YAML or JSON

[cmordi]

Hi,

Is there a current method to save the current state of my parameters and values that are shown in the print_readable_snapshot call and then make it able to load later? I've looked into databases but that seems like too much since i'm not really taking measurements and I only have one instrument.

This is what I get from the print_readable_snapshot. I simply want the ability to save the current state of those parameters and values, preferably as a JSON or YAML file and also the ability to load them in later as an experiment.

[jenshnielsen]

print_readable_snapshot is meant as a wrapper around the snapshot method of the instrument. We dont provide a method to directly save the snapshot but this snapshot is in json compatible format so you should be able to do something like

import json
from qcodes.utils import NumpyJSONEncoder

snapshot = myinstr.snapshot()

with open("pathtofileiwanttowriteto")" as f
    json.dump(snapshot, cls=NumpyJSONEncoder)

The NumpyJSONEncoder is required to enable us to write numpy arrays to the json file as regular arrays

[cmordi]

Thanks for the idea Jens. Is there a possible way to load this data? For example if I have it saved in JSON format can I load but not overwrite an experiment with it? I believe I read over a way to load a YAML file but that involved load in the station configurations.

[jenshnielsen]

We don't have support for setting the state of an instrument from the snapshot at the moment thou I can see that being a potentially useful feature

[cmordi]

No problem, I could also see it being useful. Thanks for your assistance!

[astafan8]

@cmordi you're welcome to submit a PR implementing a first version of the loading-from-snapshot feature :)

[cmordi]

@astafan8 I'll try my best to implement it ;)