What is the schema of HEC-RAS output in HDF5 format?

Question

I realize that HDF5 is a self describing format, and I can use a tool or programmatically find out what types of data groups exist in an HDF5 file.

What I am really looking for are the group and data set names created by HEC-RAS in the pxx and hxx file types. This information does not appear to be documented on the HEC-RAS web site or in the numerous manuals the group publishes.

Answer 1

You can use h5py python package to examine .h5 file structure. The following script prints out the structure of any .h5 file.

import h5py

def print_h5_structure(f, level=0):
    """    prints structure of hdf5 file    """
    for key in f.keys():
        if isinstance(f[key], h5py._hl.dataset.Dataset):
            print(f"{'  '*level} DATASET: {f[key].name}")
        elif isinstance(f[key], h5py._hl.group.Group):
            print(f"{'  '*level} GROUP: {key, f[key].name}")
            level += 1
            print_h5_structure(f[key], level)
            level -= 1

        if f[key].parent.name == "/":
            print("\n"*2)


file_path = "path/to/file.h5"
f = h5py.File(file_path, 'r')

print_h5_structure(f)

Sample .h5 file output:

GROUP: ('BEAM0000', '/BEAM0000')
  DATASET: /BEAM0000/all_samples_sum
  GROUP: ('ancillary', '/BEAM0000/ancillary')
    DATASET: /BEAM0000/ancillary/master_time_epoch
    DATASET: /BEAM0000/ancillary/mean_samples
    DATASET: /BEAM0000/ancillary/smoothing_width
  DATASET: /BEAM0000/beam
  DATASET: /BEAM0000/channel
  DATASET: /BEAM0000/delta_time
  GROUP: ('geolocation', '/BEAM0000/geolocation')
...
...