YAML based file formats in Pyrocko

The default IO format for many of Pyrocko’s internal structures and its configuration files is the YAML format. A generic mechanism is provided to allow users to define arbitrary new types with YAML IO support. These can nest or extend Pyrocko’s predefined types. The functionality for this is provided via the pyrocko.guts module, usage examples can be found in section Working with the guts package.

For example, here is how a Station object is represented in YAML format:

station.yaml

--- !pf.Station
network: DK
station: BSD
location: ''
lat: 55.1139
lon: 14.9147
elevation: 88.0
depth: 0.0
name: Bornholm Skovbrynet, Denmark
channels:
- !pf.Channel
  name: BHE
  azimuth: 90.0
  dip: 0.0
  gain: 1.0
- !pf.Channel
  name: BHN
  azimuth: 0.0
  dip: 0.0
  gain: 1.0
- !pf.Channel
  name: BHZ
  azimuth: 0.0
  dip: -90.0
  gain: 1.0

Though YAML or standard file formats can be used to hold station or event information, for the sake of simplicity, two basic text file formats are supported for stations and events. One other simple file format has been defined to store markers from the Snuffler application. These file formats are briefly described in the following sections.