ICSDClient

A python interface for accessing the ICSD API Client with the requests library. Please visit the Fitz-Karlsruhe website for further details on accessing the API.

Basic Usage

First instantiate a client object with the username and password provided by Fitz-Karlsruhe

client = ICSDClient("YOUR_USERNAME", "YOUR_PASSWORD")

Once this has authenticated successfully you can use this client to poll the ICSD and retrieve cif files.

cif_file = client.fetch_cif(1)
cif_files = client.fetch_cifs([1, 2, 3])

A search of all ICSD fields can be performed, which will return the resultant ICSD IDs, with their associated compositions

search = client.search("Na")

Once a search has been performed these can be passed to fetch_cifs() for bulk download.

cifs = client.fetch_cifs(search)

These can be written to .cif files using the writeout() method. These will be saved to the ./cifs/ folder by default, but this can be changed via the folder parameter.

client.writeout(cifs)
client.writeout(cifs, folder="/YOUR/STORAGE/PATH")

More advanced searches can be performed with a search dictionary. All available search fields can be viewed with client.search_dict.keys(). The default search type is AND however this can be changed to OR with advanced_search(search_type="or").

search_dict = {"composition": "Li"}

search = client.advanced_search(search_dict)
cifs = client.fetch_cifs(search)

Try to ensure that you log out correctly at the end of the session by calling client.logout(). If you are not successfully logged out you will need to wait an hour for the authorization token to expire.

A session history of all server responses can be found in client.session_history, make sure to save any large searches.

To download the latest version of all cifs in the ICSD, the fetch_all_cifs() method can be used. Please ensure that your API access will support a large number of downloads as this may exceed your limit. Cifs will be saved to ./cifs/ by default, although this can be changed via the cif_path attribute.

client.fetch_all_cifs()
client.fetch_all_cifs(cif_path='/YOUR/CIF/PATH')