Skip to main content

Overview

The nortech-python library is the official Python client for interacting with the Nortech AI platform. It provides a comprehensive interface to access and manage various components of the Nortech ecosystem, including metadata, data tools, and derivers.

The Nortech class serves as the primary entry point for the library. It encapsulates the core functionalities and provides a unified interface to interact with the Nortech API. It has 3 main components:

  • Metadata: Access and manage metadata such as workspaces, assets, divisions, units, devices, and signals, as per the Cloud Domain Model (link).
  • Datatools: Fetch and manipulate signal data, supporting both Pandas and Polars DataFrames, time window queries, and signal filtering.
  • Derivers: Create and manage derivers, which allow computation of new signals based on existing ones. This includes creating deriver schemas, deploying derivers, managing configurations, and testing locally.

The Nortech class is designed to be flexible, allowing customization of API settings such as the base URL, API key, pagination behaviour, and user agent. This makes it easy to integrate the library into various environments and workflows.

Dependencies​

This package relies heavily in the following packages, and it is recommended that users have basic knowledge of them:

  • Pydantic - Used for schema validation and manipulation.
  • Pandas or Polars - Used for managing signal datasets.

Installation​

You can install using pip:

pip install nortech

Or if you are using poetry:

poetry add nortech

Or if you are using UV:

uv add nortech

Configuration​

Setup your environment variables with your Nortech API Key (see how to obtain it):

export NORTECH_API_KEY="<NORTECH_API_KEY>

Alternatively you can create a .env file in the root directory of your project with the content:

NORTECH_API_KEY="<NORTECH_API_KEY>"

Usage​

To start using the SDK instantiate the Nortech client.

from nortech import Nortech

nortech = Nortech()

The previous configuration can also be ignored, by instantiating the client with the needed settings. However using the previous method is preferred as it provides more security.

nortech = Nortech(api_key="<NORTECH_API_KEY>")

Pagination​

This feature is implemented like in the API. By default it is disabled. To enable it add the following line to your config:

NORTECH_API_IGNORE_PAGINATION=False

Listing functions, mostly present in the nortech.core section, have an optional PaginationOptions input object. This object has 4 fields:

  • size - Defines the maximum number of items to be returned by the function.
  • sort_by - Defines which item field should be used for sorting.
  • sort_order - Defines the sorting order, ascending or descending.
  • next_token - Used to fetch the next page. Obtained from a previous request.

These functions return a PaginatedResponse object containing 3 functions:

  • size - Number of items returned.
  • data - List of items returned.
  • next.token - Token that can be used in the PaginationOptions to fetch the next page.

PaginatedResponse also has a next_pagination_options method that returns a PaginationOptions, which can also be used to fetch the next page.