API Hints#

Enabling API hints updates the UI to show API code snippets instructing how to reproduce the same actions and state in the API that are currently seen in the UI. This can be a very useful way to create simple reproducible workflows or to extend workflows done in the UI to batch processing in notebooks.

When API hints are enabled, you’ll see code snippets appear as you:

  • Select data loaders and configure load options

  • Adjust plugin parameters

  • Interact with viewers

  • Create and modify subsets

UI Access#

To enable API hints in the user interface:

  1. Click the API Hints button in the top toolbar (notebook environments)

  2. The button will highlight when API hints are active

  3. Click again to toggle off

v0.1
Click toolbar icons to toggle different sidebars
Data Menu

Control data and subset layer order and visibility for each viewer. Toggle layer visibility, reorder layers by dragging, and manage which data appears in the viewer. 

dm = jd.viewers[viewer].data_menu

Where Hints Appear#

When enabled, API hints appear in different contexts:

Data Loaders

Code snippets appear showing how to access the loader and set its properties. For example, when using the file loader:

ldr = jdaviz.loaders['file']
ldr.filename = 'mydata.fits'
ldr.format = '1D Spectrum'
ldr.load()
Plugins

Hints show how to access the plugin and set parameters:

plg = jdaviz.plugins['Plot Options']
plg.layer = 'image_label'
plg.image_colormap = 'Viridis'
Data Menu

When selecting data in the menu, hints show how to access that data:

dm = jdaviz.viewers['1D Spectrum'].data_menu

API Access#

Toggling Programmatically#

You can enable or disable API hints from code:

import jdaviz as jd

jd.show()

# Enable API hints
jd.toggle_api_hints(enabled=True)

# Disable API hints
jd.toggle_api_hints(enabled=False)

# Toggle current state
jd.toggle_api_hints()