Check if node exists in h5py

python h5py

troy.unrau · Aug 1, 2012 · Viewed 19.2k times · Source

I am wondering if there is a simple way to check if a node exists within an HDF5 file using h5py.

I couldn't find anything in the docs, so right now I'm using exceptions, which is ugly.

# check if node exists
# first assume it exists
e = True
try:
  h5File["/some/path"]
except KeyError:
  e = False # now we know it doesn't

To add context: I'm using this to determine if a node exists before trying to create a new node with the same name.

Answer

e = "/some/path" in h5File

does it. This is very briefly mentioned in the Group documentation.