Struct H5File 

pub struct H5File { /* private fields */ }

An HDF5 file opened for reading or writing.

Datasets created from this file hold a shared reference to the underlying I/O handle, so the file does not need to outlive its datasets (they share ownership via reference counting).

Implementations

impl H5File

pub fn create<P: AsRef<Path>>(path: P) -> Result<Self>

Create a new HDF5 file at path. Truncates if the file already exists.

pub fn open<P: AsRef<Path>>(path: P) -> Result<Self>

Open an existing HDF5 file for reading.

pub fn open_rw<P: AsRef<Path>>(path: P) -> Result<Self>

Open an existing HDF5 file for appending new datasets.

Existing datasets are preserved. New datasets can be added and will be written after the current end of file. Existing chunked datasets can be extended with write_chunk and extend_dataset.

use rust_hdf5::H5File;
let file = H5File::open_rw("existing.h5").unwrap();
let ds = file.new_dataset::<f64>().shape(&[100]).create("new_data").unwrap();
ds.write_raw(&vec![0.0f64; 100]).unwrap();
file.close().unwrap();

pub fn root_group(&self) -> H5Group

Return a handle to the root group.

The root group can be used to create datasets and sub-groups.

pub fn create_group(&self, name: &str) -> Result<H5Group>

Create a group in the root of the file.

use rust_hdf5::H5File;
let file = H5File::create("groups.h5").unwrap();
let grp = file.create_group("detector").unwrap();

pub fn new_dataset<T: H5Type>(&self) -> DatasetBuilder<T>

Start building a new dataset with the given element type.

This returns a fluent builder. Call .shape(...) to set dimensions and .create("name") to finalize.

let file = H5File::create("build.h5").unwrap();
let ds = file.new_dataset::<f64>().shape(&[3, 4]).create("matrix").unwrap();

pub fn set_attr_string(&self, name: &str, value: &str) -> Result<()>

Add a string attribute to the file (root group).

pub fn set_attr_numeric<T: H5Type>(&self, name: &str, value: &T) -> Result<()>

Add a numeric attribute to the file (root group).

pub fn attr_names(&self) -> Result<Vec<String>>

Return the names of file-level (root group) attributes.

pub fn attr_string(&self, name: &str) -> Result<String>

Read a file-level string attribute.

pub fn is_writable(&self) -> bool

Check if the file is in write/append mode.

pub fn write_vlen_strings(&self, name: &str, strings: &[&str]) -> Result<()>

Create a variable-length string dataset and write data.

This is a convenience method for writing h5py-compatible vlen string datasets using global heap storage.

pub fn dataset(&self, name: &str) -> Result<H5Dataset>

Open an existing dataset by name (read mode).

pub fn dataset_names(&self) -> Vec<String>

Return the names of all datasets in the root group.

Works in both read and write mode: in write mode, returns the names of datasets created so far; in read mode, returns the names discovered during file open.

pub fn close(self) -> Result<()>

Explicitly close the file. For a writer, this finalizes the file (writes superblock, headers, etc.). For a reader, this is a no-op.

The file is also auto-finalized on drop, but calling close() lets you handle errors.

pub fn flush(&self) -> Result<()>

Flush the file to disk. Only meaningful in write mode.