The Session

When connecting to iRODS a Session object is created, which stores information from your irods_environment.json and provides you with more information about the iRODS you are connected to and it is needed for all interactions with iRODS.

Authentication with the iRODS server

There are two ways to create a Session.

Interactive authentication

The function interactive_auth will check in the .irods folder for the default irods_environment.json and will try to authenticate with the cached password. If the password does not exist, you will be interactively asked for a password. You can also pass a path to a specific irods_environment.json with the parameter irods_env_path and you can also pass a password with the parameter password
```
from ibridges.interactive import interactive_auth
session = interactive_auth()

# or
session = interactive_auth(irods_env_path="/some/other/irods_environment.json")
```
Upon successful authentication, the function will store an obfuscated password just like the iRODS icommands.
I.e. once you are authenticated you can create more sessions without providing your password again.
Authentication by environment and password

If your workflow does not allow you to provide your password interactively, you can instantiate a Session object with the following code:
```
from ibridges import Session
session = Session(irods_env="/path/to/irods_environment.json", password="YourPassword")
```
The irods_env can also be a python dictionary which contains all your connection details.

The Session object

The Session does not only contain the connection to the iRODS server, but also some useful attributes:

print(session.username)
print(session.default_resc) # the resource to which data will be uploaded
print(session.zone)
print(session.server_version)
print(session.get_user_info()) # lists user type and groups
print(session.home) # default home for iRODS /zone/home/username

We will have a closer look at the session.home below.

The Session object is necessary for all interactions with the iRODS server and you will have to provide the object to most of the functions in iBridges.

The Session home

The session.home denotes your iRODS working path. If you do not specify a full path, all paths you create with IrodsPath (see IrodsPath ) will be prefixed with your session.home.

There are three ways to set the irods_home:

You can set the “irods_home” in the configuration file irods_environment.json
You can pass it as a parameter when creating the session
You can set it later by session.home = <YOUR_IRODS_PATH>

Note

It is not automatically checked during the connection, if the session.home really exists. Please always check:

IrodsPath(session, session.home).collection_exists()

Closing the Session

When you do not need the Session any longer, close the connection to the iRODS server:

session.close()

The Session will automatically be closed when you open it in a with statement:

with Session("irods_environment.json") as session:
    # Do things on the iRODS server