1.2. Client

We provide four ways in which you can interact with the server to manage your vantage6 resources: the User interface (UI), the Python client, the R client, and the server API. Below are installation instructions for each of them.

For most use cases, we recommend to use the UI (for anything except creating tasks - this is coming soon) and/or the Python Client. The latter covers the server functionality completely, but is more convenient for most users than sending HTTP requests directly to the API.

Warning

Depending on your algorithm it may be required to use a specific language to post a task and retrieve the results. This could happen when the output of an algorithm contains a language specific datatype and or serialization.

1.2.1. User interface

The UI is available as a website, so you don’t have to install anything! Just go to the webpage and login with your user account. If you are using the Petronas server, simply go to https://portal.petronas.vantage6.ai.

If you are a server admin and want to set up a user interface, see User Interface.

1.2.2. Python client library

Before you install the Python client, we check the version of the server you are going to interact with first. If you are using an existing server, check https://<server_url>/version (e.g. https://petronas.vantage6.ai/version or http://localhost:5000/api/version) to find its version.

Then you can install the vantage6-client with:

pip install vantage6==<version>

where you add the version you want to install. You may also leave out the version to install the most recent version.

1.2.3. R client library

The R client currently only supports creating tasks and retrieving their results. It can not (yet) be used to manage resources, such as creating and deleting users and organizations.

You can install the R client by running:

devtools::install_github('IKNL/vtg', subdir='src')

1.2.4. Server API

The API can be called via HTTP requests from a programming language of your choice. Hence, what you need to install, depends on you!

You can explore how to use the server API on https://<serverdomain>/apidocs (e.g. https://petronas.vantage6.ai/apidocs for our Petronas server).