Skip to content

API

The SPECTROview Python API lets you automate workflows and interact programmatically with the core spectroscopic processing engines of SPECTROview. It is completely decoupled from the Qt GUI (no QApplication required), making it well suited to Jupyter notebooks, batch scripts, and CI pipelines.

All modules are exposed through the spectroview.api package.

API Modules

  • spectroview.api.workspace — SpectraWorkspace / MapsWorkspace: stateful sessions that load, preprocess, fit, collect results, and save/load in one place. Files they write/read use the exact same format as the GUI's own "Save work" — a workspace built entirely from a script opens directly in the GUI, and vice versa.
  • spectroview.api.io — File readers (WDF, SPC, CSV, TXT, DAT), dataset import, result export, and a headless Renishaw map converter.
  • spectroview.api.preprocessing — Stateless array-level baseline subtraction, cropping, and normalization.
  • spectroview.api.fitting — The interface to the Vectorized Batch Fit (VBF) engine: model construction, batch fitting, and fit-model template CRUD.
  • spectroview.api.analysis — Multivariate analysis: PCA and NMF.
  • spectroview.api.graphs — Publication-quality plots that pixel-for-pixel match the GUI's own rendering, for all 9 supported plot styles, plus plot-template CRUD.
  • spectroview.api.calculators — Physical calculators for optics and unit conversions.
  • spectroview.api.settings — Headless read/write access to persistent configuration (fit defaults, model folder, last directory).
  • spectroview.api.exceptions — The SpectroviewError hierarchy raised across this package (LoadError, FitModelError, FitError, WorkspaceError, TemplateError).

Exploring the API

  • Spectra Workspace: Load discrete spectra, preprocess them, and run the batch fitting engine — both the stateful SpectraWorkspace way and the low-level array-based way.
  • Maps Workspace & 2D Analysis: Load hyperspectral/wafer maps, fit every pixel, build heatmaps and line profiles, and run PCA/NMF.
  • Data Visualization (Graphs): Replicate SPECTROview's native plots in scripts, for all plot styles, plus reusable plot templates.
  • Quick Calculators: Programmatic optical and spectroscopic-unit converters.
  • Extending SPECTROview: The real, file-based extension points (custom baseline methods, fit-model/plot-template folders) — there is no plugin framework, and this page explains what's available instead.

Error handling

Every function in spectroview.api raises a subclass of spectroview.api.exceptions.SpectroviewError on failure — never a raw KeyError/ValueError from the underlying model layer, and never a Qt dialog (which would hang in a headless script). Catch SpectroviewError broadly, or a specific subtype (LoadError, FitModelError, FitError, WorkspaceError, TemplateError) narrowly:

from spectroview.api import io
from spectroview.api.exceptions import LoadError

try:
    data = io.load_spectra("missing_file.wdf")
except LoadError as e:
    print(f"Could not load spectra: {e}")