Changelog

1.5.1 (2024-10-25)

Bug fixes and minor changes

#165: Fix missing documentation on the environment injected by icat.ingest.IngestReader into the input as changed in 1.5.0.

1.5.0 (2024-10-11)

New features

#160, #161, #163: Add class attributes to icat.ingest.IngestReader to make some prescribed values in the transformation to ICAT data file format configurable.

Bug fixes and minor changes

#162: Minor updates in the tool chain
#164: Fix dumpinvestigation.py example script

1.4.0 (2024-08-30)

New features

#155, #156: Add an option to disable parsing of command line arguments in icat.config.Config.

Bug fixes and minor changes

#152: Fix a documentation error
#154: Fix a duplicate test name

Misc

#157: icat.ingest now considered stable.

1.3.0 (2024-03-21)

New features

#143, #144: Make it easier to configure XSLT files to use for processing the input in custom versions of icat.ingest.IngestReader.
#148, #149: Inject an additional element with environment information into the input data in icat.ingest.IngestReader.
#146, #147, #151: Better error handling in icat.ingest.IngestReader.

Incompatible changes

#144: Drop class attribute icat.ingest.IngestReader.XSLT_name in favour of icat.ingest.IngestReader.XSLT_Map.

Note that icat.ingest has been declared experimental for now.

Bug fixes and minor changes

#141, #142, #150: Review documentation.
#145: Review build tool chain.

1.2.0 (2023-10-31)

New features

#125, #140: Add support to link datasets with samples in icat.ingest.
#122, #133: Allow referencing related objects by reference key in object references in XML ICAT data file format.

Incompatible changes

#138, #139: Fix the input that icat.ingest generates on the fly to be valid according to the ICAT data file schema. This also affects the input that the module accepts: the order of subelements of data need to be changed such that datasetTechnique comes before datasetInstrument.

Note that icat.ingest has been declared experimental for now.

Bug fixes and minor changes

#131, #135: Fix icat.ids.IDSClient.getApiVersion() to yield correct results for ids.server 2.0.0 and newer.
#132, #136: Fix a spurious AttributeError on cleanup after connecting to an invalid url.
#130, #137: Review test suite.

1.1.0 (2023-06-30)

New features

#113, #123: Add module icat.ingest.
#124: Add an optional keyword argument keepInstRel to icat.entity.Entity.truncateRelations().

Bug fixes and minor changes

#126, #127: Update outdated documentation.
#112, #118: Extend icatdata XSD adding extra attributes to reference objects.
#111, #121: Change the type of icat.client.Client.Register to weakref.WeakValueDictionary, fixing a memory leak.
#119, #120: Remove _config attribute from icat.config.Configuration.
#115, #116: Fix the test suite to work if either PyYAML or lxml is not available.
#128: Return an empty list from icat.dump_queries.getDataPublicationQueries() when talking to an ICAT server older than 5.0.
#117: Fixed deprecation warnings from upcoming Python 3.12.
#129: Review the build of the documentation at Read the Docs.

1.0.0 (2022-12-21)

New features

#73, #106: Add support for the ICAT schema 5.0 extensions.
#102, #104: Make the obj argument to icat.client.Client.new() case insensitive.
#77, #103: Add a keyword argument preset to allow directly passing configuration values to the constructor of class icat.config.Config.
#66, #75: Add pathlib support: methods that take a file name argument also accept a pathlib.Path object. Internal representation of file system paths are changed to use pathlib.Path where appropriate. The predefined configuarion variable configFile now supports tilde expansion. Note incompatible changes below.
#74: icat.ids.DataSelection also accepts DataCollection as argument.

Incompatible changes and deprecations

The order and arrangement of data objects in the dump file created by icatdump has been changed. In some cases, older versions of icatingest will fail to read dump files written by new versions of icatdump.
As a consequence of switching to pathlib for file system paths some return values and variables are now pathlib.Path objects rather then str. This affects:
- the return value of icat.config.cfgpath(),
- the predefined configuarion variable configFile,
- the module variable icat.config.cfgdirs.
Drop support for Python 2 and Python 3.3.
Drop keyword argument attribute and method icat.query.Query.setAttribute() from class icat.query.Query, deprecated in 0.18.0.
Drop module icat.cgi, deprecated in 0.13.0.
Drop module icat.icatcheck and exception icat.exception.GenealogyError, deprecated in 0.17.0.
Drop methods icat.ids.IDSClient.resetPrepared(), icat.ids.IDSClient.getPreparedDatafileIds(), icat.ids.IDSClient.getPreparedData(), icat.ids.IDSClient.getPreparedDataUrl(), icat.client.Client.getPreparedData(), and icat.client.Client.getPreparedDataUrl(), deprecated in 0.17.0.
Drop the predefined configuration variable configDir, deprecated in 0.13.0.
Drop helper function icat.exception.stripCause(), deprecated in 0.14.0.
Deprecate icat.config.defaultsection. Use the new preset keyword argument to icat.config.Config instead.

Bug fixes and minor changes

#98, #105: Review build tool chain. Add a helper class icat.helper.Version.
#101: Fix tests failing with PyYAML 6.0.
Some (more) example scripts now require ICAT 4.4.0 or newer.

0.21.0 (2022-01-28)

New features

#100: Add read only attributes icat.query.Query.select_clause, icat.query.Query.join_clause, icat.query.Query.where_clause, icat.query.Query.order_clause, icat.query.Query.include_clause, and icat.query.Query.limit_clause to access the respective clauses of the query string.

0.20.1 (2021-11-04)

Bug fixes and minor changes

#96: Fix failing build of the documentation at Read the Docs.

0.20.0 (2021-10-29)

New features

#86, #89: allow SQL functions to be used on the attributes in the arguments to icat.query.Query.setOrder() and icat.query.Query.addConditions().

Incompatible changes and new bugs

#94: the implementation of #89 changed the internal data structures in icat.query.Query.conditions and icat.query.Query.order. These attributes are considered internal and are deliberately not documented, so one could argue that this is not an incompatible change. But the changes also have an impact on the return value of icat.query.Query.__repr__() such that it is not suitable to recreate the query object.

Bug fixes and minor changes

#90, #91, #95: icat.query.Query.join_specs was not taken into account in icat.query.Query.copy() and icat.query.Query.__repr__().

0.19.0 (2021-07-20)

New features

#85: add an argument join_specs to the constructor of class icat.query.Query and a corresponding method icat.query.Query.setJoinSpecs() to override the join specification to be used in the created query for selected related objects.

Bug fixes and minor changes

#83, #84: enable ordering on one to many relationships in class icat.query.Query.
#84: Add warning classes icat.exception.QueryOneToManyOrderWarning and icat.exception.QueryWarning, the latter being a common base class for warnings emitted during creation of a query.

0.18.1 (2021-04-13)

Bug fixes and minor changes

#82: Change the search result in the case of multiple fields from list to tuple.
#76, #81: work around an issue in icat.server using DISTINCT in search queries for multiple fields.

0.18.0 (2021-03-29)

New features

#76, #78: add client side support for searching for multiple fields introduced in icat.server 4.11.0. Add support for building the corresponding queries in the in class icat.query.Query.

Incompatible changes and deprecations

Since icat.query.Query now also accepts a list of attribute names rather then only a single one, the corresponding keyword argument attribute has been renamed to attributes (in the plural). Accordingly, the method icat.query.Query.setAttribute() has been renamed to icat.query.Query.setAttributes(). The old names are retained as aliases, but are deprecated.

Bug fixes and minor changes

#79: fix an encoding issue in icat.client.Client.apiversion, only relevant with Python 2.
#80: add TypeError as additional ancestor of icat.exception.EntityTypeError.

0.17.0 (2020-04-30)

New features

#65: Add support for the extended IDS API calls icat.ids.IDSClient.getSize() and icat.ids.IDSClient.getStatus() accepting a preparedId as introduced in ids.server 1.11.0. Also extend the methods icat.ids.IDSClient.reset(), icat.ids.IDSClient.getDatafileIds(), icat.ids.IDSClient.getData(), icat.ids.IDSClient.getDataUrl(), icat.client.Client.getData(), and icat.client.Client.getDataUrl() to accept a preparedId in the place of a data selection.
#63: Set a default path in the URL for ICAT and IDS respectively.

Incompatible changes and deprecations

Drop support for ICAT 4.2.*, deprecated in 0.13.0.
#61, #64: Review icat.entities. The entity classes from the ICAT schema are now dynamically created based on the information gathered with the icat.client.Client.getEntityInfo() ICAT API call. Code that relied on the internals of icat.entities such as the class hierarchy or that referenced any of the entity classes directly will need to be revisited. Note that common python-icat programs don’t need to do any of that. So it is assumed that most existing programs are not concerned.
Deprecate icat.ids.IDSClient.resetPrepared(), icat.ids.IDSClient.getPreparedDatafileIds(), icat.ids.IDSClient.getPreparedData(), icat.ids.IDSClient.getPreparedDataUrl(), icat.client.Client.getPreparedData(), and icat.client.Client.getPreparedDataUrl(). Call the corresponding methods without Prepared in the name with the same arguments instead.
Deprecate support for Python 2 and Python 3.3.
Deprecate module icat.icatcheck. This module was not intended to be used in python-icat programs anyway.

Bug fixes and minor changes

#68: wipeicat enters an infinite loop if Datafiles are missing from IDS storage.
#19, #69: Review documentation and add tutorial.
#62: Minor fixes in the error handling in setup.py.
Fix icatdata-4.10.xsd: Study.endDate was erroneously not marked as optional.
#70: Fix several errors in the tests.
#58: Use specific test data for different ICAT versions.
#67, #71, #72: document the option to use suds-community instead of suds-jurko.

Misc

Do not include the documentation in the source distribution. Rely on the online documentation (see link in the README.rst) instead.

0.16.0 (2019-09-26)

New features

#59: Add support for sub-commands in icat.config.

Incompatible changes and deprecations

Drop support for Python 2.6.

Bug fixes and minor changes

#60: Fix bad coding style dealing with function parameters.
Use setuptools_scm to manage the version number.

0.15.1 (2019-07-12)

Bug fixes and minor changes

Issue #56: icatdump fails to include Shift.instrument.
Issue #57: icat.client.Client.searchChunked() still susceptible to LIMIT clause bug in icat.server (Issue icatproject/icat.server#128).
Call yaml.safe_load() rather then yaml.load(), fixing a deprecation warning from PyYAML 5.1.

0.15.0 (2019-03-27)

New features

#53: Add support for ICAT 4.10.0 including schema changes in that version.

Incompatible changes and deprecations

Require pytest 3.1.0 or newer to run the test suite. Note that this pytest version in turn requires Python 2.6, 2.7, or 3.3 and newer.
Drop support for Python 3.1 and 3.2. There is no known issue with these Python versions in python-icat (so far). But since we can’t test this any more, see above, we drop the claim to support them.

Bug fixes and minor changes

#49: Module icat.eval is outdated.
#50, #52: Fix DeprecationWarnings.
#51: Fix a compatibility issue with pytest 4.1.0 in the tests.
#54: Fix a UnicodeDecodeError in the tests.

0.14.2 (2018-10-25)

Bug fixes and minor changes

Add a hook to control internal diverting of sys.err in the icat.config module. This is intentionally not documented as it goes deeply into the internals of this module and most users will probably not need it.

0.14.1 (2018-06-05)

Bug fixes and minor changes

Fix a misleading error message if the IDS server returns an error for the Write API call.

0.14.0 (2018-06-01)

New features

#45: Add support for the IDS Write API call introduced in ids.server 1.9.0.
#46, #47: Add a ìcat.client.Client.autoRefresh() method. The scripts icatdump and icatingest call this method periodically to prevent the session from expiring.
#48: Add support for an ordering direction qualifier in class icat.query.Query.
#44: Add method icat.entity.Entity.as_dict().
#40: Add method icat.client.Client.clone().

Incompatible changes and deprecations

Deprecate function icat.exception.stripCause().

This was an internal helper function not really meant to be part of the API. The functionality has been moved in a base class of the exception hierarchy.

Bug fixes and minor changes

Add the icat.ids.IDSClient.version() API call introduced in ids.server 1.8.0.
#41: Incomprehensible error messages with Python 3.
#43: icat.client.Client.logout() should silently ignore icat.exception.ICATSessionError.
Minor changes in the error handling. Add new exception icat.exception.EntityTypeError.
Documentation fixes.

0.13.1 (2017-07-12)

Bug fixes and minor changes

#38: There should be a way to access the kwargs used to create the client in config.

0.13.0 (2017-06-09)

New features

#11: Support discovery of info about available ICAT authenticators.

If supported by the ICAT server (icat.server 4.9.0 and newer), the icat.config module queries the server for information on available authenticators and the credential keys they require for login. The configuration variables for these keys are then adapted accordingly. Note incompatible changes below.
Review wipeicat. This was an example script, but is now promoted to be a regular utility script that gets installed.
#32: Add support for using aggregate functions in class icat.query.Query.
#30: Add a predefined config variable type icat.config.cfgpath().
#31: Add a flag to add the default variables to the icat.config.Config constructor (default: True).
icat.dumpfile_xml.XMLDumpFileReader also accepts a XML tree object as input.
Verify support for ICAT 4.9.0. Add new ICAT API method icat.client.Client.getVersion().

Incompatible changes and deprecations

As a consequence of the discovery of available authenticators, the workflow during configuration need to be changed. Until now, the beginning of a typical python-icat program would look like:
```
config = icat.config.Config()
# Optionally, add custom configuration variables:
# config.add_variable(...)
conf = config.getconfig()
client = icat.Client(conf.url, **conf.client_kwargs)
```
E.g. first the configuration variables are set up, then the configuration is applied and finally the icat.client.Client object is created using the configuration values. With the discovery of authenticators, the icat.config.Config object itself needs a working icat.client.Client object in order to connect to the ICAT server and query the authenticator info. The icat.client.Client object will now be created in the icat.config.Config constructor and returned along with the configuration values by icat.config.Config.getconfig(). You will need to replace the code from above by:
```
config = icat.config.Config()
# Optionally, add custom configuration variables:
# config.add_variable(...)
client, conf = config.getconfig()
```
The derived configuration variable client_kwargs that was used to pass additional arguments from the configuration to the Client constructor is no longer needed and has been removed.

The optional argument args has been moved from the icat.config.Config.getconfig() call to the icat.config.Config constructor, retaining the same semantics. E.g. you must change in your code:
```
config = icat.config.Config()
conf = config.getconfig(args)
client = icat.Client(conf.url, **conf.client_kwargs)
```
to:
```
config = icat.config.Config(args)
client, conf = config.getconfig()
```
Deprecate support for ICAT 4.2.*.

Note that already now significant parts of python-icat require features from ICAT 4.3 such as the JPQL like query language. The only workaround is to upgrade your icat.server.
Deprecate module icat.cgi.

It is assumed that this has never actually been used in production. For web applications it is recommended to use the Python Web Server Gateway Interface (WSGI) rather then CGI.
Deprecate the predefined configuration variable configDir.

The main use case for this variable was to be substituted in the default value for the path of an additional configuration file. The typical usage was the definition of a configuration variable like:
```
config = icat.config.Config()
config.add_variable('extracfg', ("--extracfg",),
                    dict(help="Extra config file"),
                    default="%(configDir)s/extra.xml", subst=True)
```
This set the default path for the extra config file to the same directory the main configuration file was found in. Using the new config variable type icat.config.cfgpath() you can replace this by:
```
config = icat.config.Config()
config.add_variable('extracfg', ("--extracfg",),
                    dict(help="Extra config file"),
                    default="extra.xml", type=icat.config.cfgpath)
```
This will search the extra config file in all the default config directories, regardless where the main configuration file was found.
The fixes for #35 and #36 require some changes in the semantics in the f and the mode argument to icat.dumpfile.open_dumpfile(). Most users will probably not notice the difference.

Bug fixes and minor changes

Changed the default for the icat.config.Config constructor argument ids from False to "optional".
Improved icat.client.Client.searchChunked(). This version is not susceptible to Issue icatproject/icat.server#128 anymore.
Move the management of dependencies of tests into a separate package pytest-dependency that is distributed independently.
#34: TypeError in the icat.client.Client constructor if setting the sslContext keyword argument.
#35: io.UnsupportedOperation is raised if icat.dumpfile.open_dumpfile() is called with an in-memory stream.
#36: icat.dumpfile.DumpFileReader and icat.dumpfile.DumpFileWriter must not close file.
#37: TypeError is raised when writing a YAML dumpfile to io.StringIO.

0.12.0 (2016-10-10)

New features

Verify support for ICAT 4.8.0 and IDS 1.7.0.
Add methods icat.ids.IDSClient.reset() and icat.ids.IDSClient.resetPrepared().
#28: Add support for searching for attributes in class icat.query.Query.

Bug fixes and minor changes

Sort objects in icatdump before writing them to the dump file. This keeps the order independent from the collation used in the ICAT database backend.
#2: for Python 3.6 (expected to be released in Dec 2016) and newer, use the support for chunked transfer encoding in the standard lib. Keep our own implementation in module icat.chunkedhttp only for compatibility with older Python versions.
Improved the example script wipeicat.
Add an example script dumprules.py.
Add missing schema definition for the ICAT XML data file format for ICAT 4.7.
Fix an AttributeError during error handling.

0.11.0 (2016-06-01)

New features

#12, #23: add support for ICAT 4.7.0 and IDS 1.6.0. ICAT 4.7.0 had some small schema changes that have been taken into account.

Incompatible changes

Remove the autoget argument from icat.entity.Entity.getUniqueKey(). Deprecated since 0.9.0.

Bug fixes and minor changes

#21: configuration variable promptPass is ignored when set in the configuration file.
#18: Documentation: missing stuff in the module index.
#20: add test on compatibility with icat.server.
#24, #25: test failures caused by different timezone settings of the test server.
Use a separate module distutils_pytest to run the tests from setup.py.
icat.icatcheck: move checking of exceptions into a separate method icat.icatcheck.ICATChecker.checkExceptions(). Do not report exceptions defined in the client, but not found in the schema.
Many fixes in the example script wipeicat.
Fix a missing import in the icatexport.py example script.
Somewhat clearer error messages for some special cases of icat.exception.SearchAssertionError.

Misc

Change license to Apache 2.0.

0.10.0 (2015-12-06)

New features

Add a method icat.entity.Entity.copy().
Implement setting an INCLUDE 1 clause equivalent in class icat.query.Query.
Add an optional argument includes to icat.client.Client.searchMatching().
Add a hook for a custom method to validate entity objects before creating them at the ICAT server.
Add support for ids.server 1.5.0:
- Add icat.ids.IDSClient.getDatafileIds() and icat.ids.IDSClient.getPreparedDatafileIds() calls.
- icat.ids.IDSClient.getStatus() allows sessionId to be None.
Add new exception class icat.exception.ICATNotImplementedError that is supposed to be raised by the upcoming version 4.6.0 of icat.server.

Bug fixes and minor changes

#13: icat.client.Client.searchChunked() raises exception if the query contains a percent character.
#15: icatdump raises icat.exception.DataConsistencyError for DataCollectionParameter.
#14: icat.entity.Entity.__sortkey__() may raise RuntimeError “maximum recursion depth exceeded”.
Allow a icat.ids.DataSelection to be created from (almost) any Iterator, not just a Sequence. Store the object ids in icat.ids.DataSelection internally in a set rather then a list.
Add optional arguments objindex to icat.dumpfile.DumpFileReader.getobjs() and keyindex to icat.dumpfile.DumpFileWriter.writedata() to allow the caller to control these internal indices.
Add optional argument chunksize to icat.dumpfile.DumpFileWriter.writedata().
The constructor of class icat.query.Query checks the version of the ICAT server and raises an error if too old.
The icat.ids.IDSClient.getIcatUrl() call checks the version of the IDS server.
Some changes in the test suite, add more tests.

0.9.0 (2015-08-13)

New features

#4: Extend icatrestore to become a generic ingestion tool.

Rename icatrestore to icatingest.

Allow referencing of objects by attribute rather then by unique key in the input file for icatingest (only in the XML backend).

Allow adding references to already existing objects in the input file for icatingest (only in the XML backend).

Change the name of the root element in the input file for icatingest (and the output of icatdump) from icatdump to icatdata (only in the XML backend).
Implement upload of Datafiles to IDS rather then only creating the ICAT object from icatingest.
Implement handling of duplicates in icatingest. The same options (THROW, IGNORE, CHECK, and OVERWRITE) as in the import call in the ICAT restful interface are supported.
#1: add a test suite.
#3: use Sphinx to generate the API documentation.
Add method icat.client.Client.searchMatching().
Add the icat.ids.IDSClient.getIcatUrl() call introduced with IDS 1.4.0.

Incompatible changes and deprecations

The Lucene calls that have been removed in ICAT 4.5.0 are also removed from the client.
Deprecate the use of the autoget argument in icat.entity.Entity.getUniqueKey().

Bug fixes and minor changes

#6: icat.query.Query: adding a condition on a meta attribute fails.
#10: client.putData: IDSInternalError is raised if datafile.datafileCreateTime is set.
Ignore import errors from the backend modules in icatingest and icatdump. This means one can use the scripts also if the prerequisites for some backends are not fulfilled, only the concerned backends are not available then.
#5, compatibility with ICAT 4.5: entity ids are not guaranteed to be unique among all entities, but only for entities of the same type.
#5, compatibility with ICAT 4.5: icat.client.Client.getEntityInfo() also lists createId, createTime, modId, and modTime as attributes. This need to be taken into account in icat.icatcheck.
The last fix in 0.8.0 on the string representation operator icat.query.Query.__str__() was not complete, the operator still had unwanted side effects.
Fix a bug in the handling of errors raised from the ICAT or the IDS server. This bug affected only Python 3.
Add proper type checking and conversion for setting an attribute that corresponds to a one to many relationship in class icat.entity.Entity. Accept any iterable of entities as value.
#9: icatingest with duplicate=CHECK may fail when attributes are not strings. Note that this bug was only present in an alpha version, but not in any earlier release version.
Source repository moved to Git. This gives rise to a few tiny changes. To name the most visible ones: python2_6.patch is now auto generated by comparing two source branches and must be applied with -p1 instead of -p0, the format of the icat module variable icat.__revision__ has changed.
Review default exports of modules. Mark some helper functions as internal.

0.8.0 (2015-05-08)

New features

Enable verification of the SSL server certificate in HTTPS connections. Add a new configuration variable checkCert to control this. It is set to True by default.

Note that this requires either Python 2.7.9 or 3.2 or newer. With older Python version, this configuration option has no effect.
Add type conversion of configuration variables.
Add substituting the values of configuration variables in other variables.
Add another derived configuration variable configDir.
Default search path for the configuration file: add an appropriate path on Windows, add /etc/icat and ~/.config/icat to the path if not on Windows.
Add icatexport.py and icatimport.py example scripts that use the corresponding calls to the ICAT RESTful interface to dump and restore the ICAT content.
The constructor of icat.exception.ICATError and the icat.exception.translateError() function are now able to construct exceptions based on a dict such as those returned by the ICAT RESTful interface in case of an error.

Unified handling of errors raised from the ICAT and the IDS server.

Incompatible changes

As a consequence of the unified handling of errors, the exception class hierarchy has been reviewed, with a somewhat more clear separation of exceptions raised by other libraries, exceptions raised by the server, and exceptions raised by python-icat respectively.

If you put assumptions on the exception hierarchy in your code, this might need a review. In particular, icat.exception.IDSResponseError is not derived from icat.exception.IDSError any more. icat.exception.IDSServerError has been removed.

I.e., replace all references to icat.exception.IDSServerError by icat.exception.IDSError in your code. Furthermore, if you catch icat.exception.IDSError in your code with the intention to catch both, errors from the IDS server and icat.exception.IDSResponseError in one branch, replace:
```
try:
    # ...
except IDSError:
    # ...
```
by
```
try:
    # ...
except (IDSError, IDSResponseError):
    # ...
```

Bug fixes and minor changes

The icat.query.Query class now checks the attributes referenced in conditions and includes for validity.
Fix a regression introduced with version 0.7.0 that caused non-ASCII characters in queries not to work.
Fix icat.exception.ICATError and icat.exception.IDSError to gracefully deal with non-ASCII characters in error messages. Add a common abstract base class icat.exception.ICATException that cares about this.
Fix: the string representation operator icat.query.Query.__str__() should not modify the query object.
Cosmetic improvement in the formal representation operator icat.query.Query.__repr__().

0.7.0 (2015-02-11)

New features

Add a module icat.query with a class icat.query.Query that can be used to build ICAT search expressions. Instances of the class may be used in place of search expression strings where appropriate.

Numerous examples on how to use this new class can be found in querytest.py in the examples.
Add a class method icat.entity.Entity.getNaturalOrder() that returns a list of attributes suitable to be used in an ORDER BY clause in an ICAT search expression.
Add a class method icat.entity.Entity.getAttrInfo() that queries the EntityInfo from the ICAT server and extracts the information on an attribute.
Add a method icat.client.Client.getEntityClass() that returns the icat.entity.Entity subclass corresponding to a name.
Add a warning class icat.exception.QueryNullableOrderWarning.
Add an optional argument username to the icat.ids.IDSClient.getLink() method.

0.6.0 (2014-12-15)

New features

Add support for ICAT 4.4.0: add new icat.entity.Entity type InvestigationGroup, role has been added to the constraint in InvestigationUser.
Add new API method icat.ids.IDSClient.getApiVersion() that will be introduced with the upcoming version 1.3.0 of IDS. This method may also be called with older IDS servers: if it is not available because the server does not support it yet, the server version is guessed from visible features in the API.

icat.ids.IDSClient checks the API version on init.
Add new API methods icat.ids.IDSClient.isReadOnly(), icat.ids.IDSClient.isTwoLevel(), icat.ids.IDSClient.getLink(), and icat.ids.IDSClient.getSize() introduced with IDS 1.2.0.
Add no_proxy support. The proxy configuration variables, http_proxy, https_proxy, and no_proxy are set in the environment. [Suggested by Alistair Mills]
Rework the dump file backend API for icatdump and icatrestore. As a result, writing custom dump or restore scripts is much cleaner and easier now.

This may cause compatibility issues for users who either wrote their own dump file backend or for users who wrote custom dump or restore scripts, using the XML or YAML backends. In the first case, compare the old XML and YAML backends with the new versions and you’ll easily see what needs to get adapted. In the latter case, have a look into the new versions of icatdump and icatrestore to see how to use the new backend API.
Add method icat.client.Client.searchChunked().
Add method icat.entity.Entity.getAttrType().

Incompatible changes

Move the group argument to method icat.client.Client.createRules() to the last position and make it optional, having default None.

In the client code, replace:
```
client.createRules(group, crudFlags, what)
```
by
```
client.createRules(crudFlags, what, group)
```
The icat.client.Client.putData() method returns the new Datafile object created by IDS rather then only its id.

If you depend on the old behavior in the client code, replace:
```
dfid = client.putData(file, datafile)
```
by
```
df = client.putData(file, datafile)
dfid = df.id
```

Minor changes and fixes

The icat.client.Client.searchText() and icat.client.Client.luceneSearch() client method have been deprecated. They are destined to be dropped from the ICAT server or at least changed in version 4.5.0 and might get removed from python-icat in a future release as well.

The methods now emit a deprecation warning when called. Note however that Python by default ignores deprecation warnings, so you won’t see this unless you switch them on.
Fixed overly strict type checking in the constructor arguments of icat.ids.DataSelection and as a consequence also in the arguments of the ICAT client methods icat.client.Client.getData(), icat.client.Client.getDataUrl(), icat.client.Client.prepareData(), and icat.client.Client.deleteData(): now, any Sequence of entity objects will be accepted, in particular an icat.entity.EntityList.
Change icat.ids.IDSClient.archive() and icat.ids.IDSClient.restore() to not to return anything. While formally, this might be considered an incompatible change, these methods never returned anything meaningful in the past.
Slightly modified the == and != operator for icat.entity.Entity. Add a icat.entity.Entity.__hash__() method. The latter means that you will more likely get what you expect when you create a set of icat.entity.Entity objects or use them as keys in a dict.
The module icat.eval now only does its work (parsing command line arguments and connecting to an ICAT server) when called from the Python command line. When imported as a regular module, it will essentially do nothing. This avoids errors to occur when imported.
setup.py raises an error with Python 2.6 if python2_6.patch has not been applied.
Add missing MANIFEST.in in the source distribution.
Remove the work around the Suds datetime value bug (setting the environment variable TZ to UTC) from icat. Instead, document it along with other known issues in the README.
Minor fixes in the sorting of entity objects.
Add an optional argument args to icat.config.Config.getconfig(). If set to a list of strings, it replaces sys.argv. Mainly useful for testing.
Add comparison operators to class icat.listproxy.ListProxy.

0.5.1 (2014-07-07)

Add a module icat.eval that is intended to be run using the -m command line switch to Python. It allows to evaluate Python expressions within an ICAT session as one liners directly from the command line, as for example:
```
# get all Dataset ids
$ python -m icat.eval -e 'client.search("Dataset.id")' -s root
[102284L, 102288L, 102289L, 102293L]
```
Fix an issue in the error handling in the IDS client that caused an urllib2.HTTPError to be raised instead of an icat.exception.IDSServerError in the case of an error from the IDS server and thus the loss of all details about the error reported in the reply from the server.
Add specific exception classes for the different error codes raised by the IDS server.
Fix compatibility issue with Python 3.3 that caused the HTTP method to be set to None in some IDS methods, which in turn caused an internal server error to be raised in the IDS server.
Fix compatibility issues with Python 3.4: some methods have been removed from class urllib.request.Request which caused an AttributeError in the icat.ids.IDSClient.
Fix: failed to connect to an ICAT server if it advertises a version number having a trailing “-SNAPSHOT” in icat.client.Client.getApiVersion(). For compatibility, a trailing “-SNAPSHOT” will be replaced by “a1” in the client.apiversion attribute.
Suppress misleading context information introduced with Python 3 (PEP 3134) from the traceback in some error messages. Unfortunately, the fix only works for Python 3.3 and newer.
Make example files compatible across Python versions without modifications, such as running 2to3 on them.

0.5.0 (2014-06-24)

Integrate an IDS client in the ICAT client.
Improved icatdump and icatrestore:
- Changed the logical structure of the dump file format which significantly simplified the scripts. Note that old dump files are not compatible with the new versions.
- Add support for XML dump files. A XML Schema Definition for the dump file format is provided in the doc directory.
The scripts are now considered to be legitimate tools (though still alpha) rather then mere examples. Consequently, they will be installed into the bin directory.
Implicitly set a one to many relation to an empty list if it is accessed but not present in an icat.entity.Entity object rather then raising an AttributeError. See ICAT Issue 112.
Allow setting one to many relationship attributes and deletion of attributes in icat.entity.Entity. Add method icat.entity.Entity.truncateRelations(). Truncate dummy relations set by the factory in newly created entity objects.
Cache the result from icat.client.Client.getEntityInfo() in the client.
Add a method icat.entity.Entity.__sortkey__() that return a key that when used as a sorting key in list.sort() allows any list of entity objects to have a well defined order. Sorting is based on the Constraint attributes. Add a class variable icat.entity.Entity.SortAttrs that overrides this and will be set as a fall back for those entity classes that do not have a suitable Constraint.

0.4.0 (2014-02-11)

Add support for the jurko fork of Suds and for Python 3.
Add a new method icat.client.Client.searchUniqueKey().
Add an optional argument keyindex to method icat.entity.Entity.getUniqueKey() that is used as a cache of previously generated keys. Remove the argument addbean. It had been documented as for internal use only, so this is not considered an incompatible change.
Add a new exception icat.exception.DataConsistencyError. Raise this in icat.entity.Entity.getUniqueKey() if a relation that is required in a constraint is not set.
Rename icat.exception.SearchResultError to icat.exception.SearchAssertionError. SearchResultError was a misnomer here, as this exception class is very specific to icat.client.Client.assertedSearch(). Add a new generic exception class icat.exception.SearchResultError and derive icat.exception.SearchAssertionError from it. This way, the change should not create any compatibility problems in client programs.
Add a check in icat.icatcheck that the icat.exception.ICATError subclasses are in sync with icatExceptionType as defined in the schema.
Bugfix: The code dealing with exceptions raised by the ICAT server did require all attributes in IcatException sent by the server to be set, although some of these attributes are marked as optional in the schema.
Do not delete the Suds cache directory in icat.client.Client.cleanup().
Installation: python-icat requires Python 2.6 or newer. Raise an error if setup.py is run by a too old Python version.
Move some internal routines in a separate module icat.helper.
Greatly improved example scripts icatdump and icatrestore.

0.3.0 (2014-01-10)

Add support for ICAT 4.3.1. (Compatibility with ICAT 4.3.2 has also been tested but did not require any changes.)
Implement alias names for entity attributes. This facilitates compatibility of client programs to different ICAT versions. E.g. a client program may use rule.grouping regardless of the ICAT version, for ICAT 4.2.* this is aliased to rule.group.
Add a method icat.client.Client.assertedSearch().
Add a method icat.entity.Entity.getUniqueKey().
Add entity methods Group.getUsers() and Instrument.getInstrumentScientists().
WARNING, incompatible change!

Changed entity methods Instrument.addInstrumentScientist() and Investigation.addInvestigationUser() to not to create the respective user any more, but rather expect a list of existing users as argument. Renamed Group.addUser(), Instrument.addInstrumentScientist(), and Investigation.addInvestigationUser() to addUsers(), addInstrumentScientists(), and addInvestigationUsers() (note the plural “s”) respectively.

In the client code, replace:
```
pi = investigation.addInvestigationUser(uid, fullName=userName,
                                        search=True,
                                        role="Principal Investigator")
```
by
```
pi = client.createUser(uid, fullName=userName, search=True)
investigation.addInvestigationUsers([pi], role="Principal Investigator")
```
Work around a bug in the way SUDS deals with datetime values: set the local time zone to UTC.
Add example scripts icatdump and icatrestore.

0.2.0 (2013-11-18)

Rework internals of icat.config.
Bugfix: icat.config.Config required a password to be set even if prompt for password was requested.
Add support for configuration via environment variables.
Add support of HTTP proxy settings. [Suggested by Alistair Mills]
WARNING, incompatible change! The configuration read by icat.config is not stored as attributes on the icat.config.Config object itself, but rather icat.config.Config.getconfig() returns an object with these attributes set. This keeps the configuration values cleanly separated from the attributes of the icat.config.Config object.

In the client code, replace:
```
conf = icat.config.Config()
conf.getconfig()
```
by
```
config = icat.config.Config()
conf = config.getconfig()
```
Move ConfigError from icat.config to icat.exception.
Move GenealogyError from icat.icatcheck to icat.exception.
Review export of symbols. Most client programs should only need to import icat and icat.config.

0.1.0 (2013-11-01)

Initial version