Articles on funnelferry's Blog

Final Blog - A Journey full of learnings

anveshanrx8@gmail.com (funnelferry) — Mon, 26 Aug 2019 18:07:49 +0000

Name : Anveshan Lal

Organisation : Mission Support System (Python Software Foundation)

Mentors : Joern Ungermann, Jens-Uwe Grooß

Project : Updating Geographical Plotting Routines

Project Code : Pull Request referencing project code

Commit log : All the commits comprising the all the progress of project

A detailed report about my GSoC project regarding migration of basemap dependent code to Cartopy.

Dependencies

Aside from the dependencies required to run MSS:

$ conda install cartopy

I would detail the progress by headlining the project in 3 parts

1. Server Side Migration

This address changes in code in respect to files:

mss/mslib/mswms/mpl_hsec.py

mss/mslib/mswms/mpl_hsec_styles.py

Current State

Server side is complete with all the previous functionality retained

Remaining Progress

None

Unresolved Issues

Map produced is almost aligned with client perfectly but it is not 100 %

Relevant Pull-Requests

https://bitbucket.org/wxmetvis/mss/pull-requests/643

https://bitbucket.org/wxmetvis/mss/pull-requests/651

https://bitbucket.org/wxmetvis/mss/pull-requests/653

https://bitbucket.org/wxmetvis/mss/pull-requests/654

2. Client Side Migration

This address changes in code in respect to files:

mss/mslib/msui/mpl_map.py

mss/mslib/msui/mpl_qtwidget.py

mss/mslib/msui/mpl_pathinteractor.py

mss/mslib/msui/topview.py

Current State

User Interface is perfectly functional and all the functionality is retained including the interaction of waypoints and functions related to it.

Remaining Progress

If the time allowed I would have like to exploit Cartopy's native ability to plot Geodetic Circular Paths, instead of the current manual solution.

Unresolved Issues

None

Relevant Pull Requests

https://bitbucket.org/wxmetvis/mss/pull-requests/656

https://bitbucket.org/wxmetvis/mss/pull-requests/671

3. Added Support for EPSG

mss/mslib/msui/mpl_map.py

mss/mslib/utils.py

Current State

All the epsg's previously present and additional EPSG's added are supported by the program. This includes the epsg which were non-functional from Cartopy's in-house function to plot epsg codes directly and all others Cartopy already supports.

Remaining Progress

There exists a large number of EPSGs (in excess of 4300), I couldn't test all of them but did encountered few which are not yet supported by Cartopy like 2985, 2986, 7415. With more testing there ought to be more which are still not supported by Cartopy but a large number of them are.

Relevant Pull Requests

https://bitbucket.org/wxmetvis/mss/pull-requests/684

https://bitbucket.org/wxmetvis/mss/pull-requests/691

Testing

Since the project in large part required me to maintain previous functionality there was not much scope to create new tests, but I did add two tests; One to test for a new function I added and the other test for EPSGs.

Failed Tests:

Pytest shows 2 tests failed although the failed tests seem to relate to a working and manually tested functionality of adding and removing point on waypoint interactor.

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Joern Ungermann who mentored me throughout summer and actively helped me better the program and code, and also provided valuable feedback frequently. I would also like to express my gratiude towards MSS community including Reimar Bauer, Jens-Uwe Grooß and Shivashish Padhi who have been very welcoming from the start and helped get started and be familiar with MSS despite my serious lack of programming expertise and made my summer experience really great.

Week 10: Cartopy's EPSG

anveshanrx8@gmail.com (funnelferry) — Mon, 19 Aug 2019 03:15:22 +0000

What did you do this week?

This week I started adding support to plot the projections from EPSG code natively using Cartopy's own feature `epsg([epsg code])` from its CRS class. Apart from that I also successfully corrected the feature to disable or enable gridlines for map which was broken while migrating the UI side code to Cartopy.

What is up next?

This, EPSG support, still needs a lot more refinement and the way UI handles it is still needs a little improvement so I will work on that in the coming week just before the final evaluation week.

Did you faced any blockers?

Yes, I did faced a couple of blockers specially with enable/disable of gridlines but eventually looking up the documentation it got solved in not much time.

Week 9: Perfecting the UI

anveshanrx8@gmail.com (funnelferry) — Thu, 15 Aug 2019 16:21:08 +0000

What did you do this week?

During this week I revaluated my work and also worked on perfecting various parts of migrated (to cartopy) interface of MSS addressing various important functionalities. Mainly worked on making the coastlines - enable/disable feature to work perfectly, Apart from that rewrote the code to accomodate the plotting of gridlines for stereographic projections.

What is coming up next?

After this I will work a little more on UI, still some things yet to work correctly, like enable/disable of gridlines.

Did you faced any blockers?

No I did not faced any blockers here.

Week 8: Appearances and WMS server

anveshanrx8@gmail.com (funnelferry) — Mon, 22 Jul 2019 20:51:31 +0000

What did you do this week?

As planned, since the basic working of topview with all the code migrated to cartopy was fine. But now I needed to address all the bugs and make sure the working of each functionality and if any bug then bring it to working state. So building up on that my mentor identified few errors, one of which was the absolutely rubbish image being projected when using through WMS server. I was a little lost and experimented with wrong stuff and diverted a little more of my time than needed; basically I thought the issue is definitely being traced back from wms_control.py but infact it was merely the absence of keyword `extent` from function `imshow`. Other than that I also worked on the appearance feature to change color of water bodies which previously didn't worked unless you restart mss.

What is coming up next?

I think the current plan is to remove any source of crash in program through the interface and then proceed to rewrite tests which were basemap specific. Yes I did

Did you get stuck anywhere?

Apart from tracing back the issue to imshow function, No I did not get stuck anywhere.

Week 7: Waypoints and their Interaction

anveshanrx8@gmail.com (funnelferry) — Fri, 19 Jul 2019 19:58:10 +0000

What did I do this week?

I restored most of previous functionality I stripped off for simpler progress. Further major time was spent on getting the working of waypoints correct. After changing most of plotting routines into cartopy, the waypoints were working with all their functions but thy lost functionality and couldn't adapt to change in projection. So I also worked on solving that and did solved it at the end.

What is up next?

Currenty, testing for bugs and making sure the correct functionality of all the option controls like:

1. WMS
2. KML
3. Satellite

Apart from that options to manually enable/disable the features and changing the color is also to be done.

Did you get stuck anywhere?

Yes, I think solving the waypoints issue maybe took a bit more time than needed but I think it was necessary for a confidence boost to me about my abilities to debug and trace the most delicate issues and solve them on my own.

Week 6: Client side and OOP

anveshanrx8@gmail.com (funnelferry) — Tue, 09 Jul 2019 13:03:01 +0000

What I did?

I worked on client side by migrating functions written in basemap and creating the instance of topview to generate plot in cartopy

What is next?

Actually a lot, Apart from generating a basic plot, there still a lot to go, before doing this I removed a lot of functionality and this process worked for me in server side as suggested by my mentor who has been immensely helpful towards guiding me.

Did you get stuck?

Yes, I was able to plot a blank canvas but could not display the map, my mentor diagnosed and proposed a solution further I could not generate different maps from drop down menu but after little bit of playing around I solved that. So yes, I am on way of doing this.

Week 4: Finishing up first evaluation

anveshanrx8@gmail.com (funnelferry) — Sun, 30 Jun 2019 17:55:10 +0000

What did you do this week?

I have been working on completing up the server side functionality, that is, completing removing basemap's use from there and make sure every coded part in cartopy is working properly, further adding the ability to plot 'barbs' using cartopy.

What is coming up?

Completing everything related to back end and moving on to migrate the front end of code base is my next task

Did you get stuck anywhere?

Yes, I had several errors in contourf function but later were resolved when I scoured the issue tracker of Cartopy on github.

Week 3: Server-side about to finish

anveshanrx8@gmail.com (funnelferry) — Thu, 20 Jun 2019 21:38:23 +0000

What did I do this Week?

This week I tranlated all the required functionality for mpl_hsec.py to generate plot and rewrote the get_projection_params to interpret projection parameters in accordance with cartopy ways

What is coming up?

Mpl_hsec_styles.py contains the plot styles responsible for contours, barbs, quivers and overlay of necessary data, Finishing this will be the end of migration of server-side code.

Did you get stuck anywhere?

I did get stuck, at one point the correct cartopy code was not producing any plots and that was case the everywhere on the system, on a jupyter notebook or in a standalone script, but then I found the solution in another related issue from issue tracker of Cartopy.

Week 2: Basic plot into the server

anveshanrx8@gmail.com (funnelferry) — Mon, 10 Jun 2019 18:24:48 +0000

What did I do this week?

This week I worked on to getting a basic plot as output as a result of changing from basemap to cartopy.

As suggested by my mentor I basically removed all the features that were there with basemap and just tried to get a plain map working, from here I will try to rebuild those specifics in cartopy.

Further I wrote one small test for the a function I added which basically emulated a similar function in pyproj.

What is coming up next?

Building on the previous work I would emulate the features previously available in basemap with also taking advantage of cartopy's other features to make the task easier and code shorter than it would have been with basemap and have a result plot plotted through the WMS successfully.

Did you get stuck anywhere?

Yes I got stuck a few number of places some of which my mentor helped me got through, one where I had to strip the code of a function to bare minimum for it to be function but I got through with a little bit of time.

Week 1: Starting the migration!

anveshanrx8@gmail.com (funnelferry) — Tue, 04 Jun 2019 17:37:37 +0000

Hello all, I am Anveshan and have completed my first week of coding period, learning variety of things about Cartopy package which is used for plotting tasks as matplotlib's basemap is

What did you do this week?

I changed functions in ```utils.py```, that made use of basemap's pyproj class for the following two tasks using cartopy package:

To get distance between two points
To compute intermediate points between two coordinates on basis of connection type (circular or linear)

What is coming up next?

I will assess and start making changes ```mpl_hsec.py``` which is a constituent of server side code and makes of basemap heavily for the horizontal plotting operations, and is also used by ```mpl_hsec_styles.py``` as a superclass.

Did you get stuck anywhere?

Yes I had a difficulties in making the function ```ntps``` from basemap in cartopy but I got through it with help of stackoverflow and cartopy's documentation.

Week 0: Entering Coding Period

anveshanrx8@gmail.com (funnelferry) — Thu, 30 May 2019 10:32:07 +0000

Hello all, I am Anveshan Lal and during this GSoC I will be working on ‘Updating Geographical Plotting Routines’ for Mission Support System.

What did you do this Week?

I looked into the codebase of MSS and after discussion with my mentor I divided the parts of code I will be working towards. Also, I read up the documentation of Cartopy and played around with the relevant Geodesic functions required by the codebase through the help of Jupyter Notebooks.

What is coming up next Week?

Starting this week I will be migrating the server side code of MSS to Cartopy package and will complete that task by next week.

Did you get stuck anywhere?

I had some doubts in how to approach and start making changes to codebase which were resolved during a voice-over meeting with my mentor. Other than that I do not have any major blockers regarding my project currently.