CDFpp (CDF++)

A modern, from-scratch C++20 implementation of NASA's CDF (Common Data Format) with full Python bindings.

Why another CDF library? NASA's official C implementation has no multi-thread support (global shared state), an aging C89 interface, and a license incompatible with most Linux distribution policies. CDFpp solves all three: it is thread-safe, idiomatic C++20, and MIT-licensed.

Highlights

• Header-only C++20 library — just add the include path, no linking required
• Complete read/write support — CDF versions 2.2 through 3.x, row and column major, compressed files and variables (GZip, RLE)
• Python bindings (pycdfpp) via pybind11 — zero-copy NumPy integration, GIL-free I/O
• SIMD-accelerated time conversions — AVX512/AVX2/SSE2 runtime dispatch for TT2000, EPOCH, EPOCH16
• Lazy loading — variable data is read on first access, not at file open
• Fast — up to ~4 GB/s read throughput; SIMD time conversions at up to 14 billion epochs/s
• Runs everywhere — Linux, Windows, macOS (x86_64 + ARM64), and WebAssembly (Pyodide / emscripten-forge)
• In-browser app — CDFpp Explorer inspects, plots, and ISTP-validates CDF files entirely client-side, no install

Packages & CI

	Linux x86_64	Linux aarch64	Windows x86_64	macOS x86_64	macOS ARM64	WASM (Pyodide)
Wheels
Tests

Also available on emscripten-forge for use in JupyterLite and other Emscripten-based environments.

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CDFpp Explorer — CDF files in your browser

CDFpp compiles to WebAssembly, so the whole library runs client-side — no install, no server, and your files never leave your machine. CDFpp Explorer is a small web app built on it:

• Inspect — browse variables and attributes grouped by ISTP VAR_TYPE, with live search and a value preview
• Plot — line plots and spectrograms, ISTP-aware (DEPEND_0 time axis, DISPLAY_TYPE, SCALETYP, fill/valid masking), with CSV / JSON export
• Validate — hand the file to AstraLint for ISTP conformance checking

👉 Open CDFpp Explorer

The WebAssembly wrapper lives in wacdfpp/ and ships TypeScript declarations (wacdfpp/cdfpp.d.ts) for embedding CDF read/write — with zero-copy typed arrays — in your own JavaScript app.

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Installing

From PyPI

pip install pycdfpp

From source (C++ library)

meson setup build
ninja -C build
sudo ninja -C build install

From source (Python wheel)

python -m build .
# wheel is in dist/

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Quick start (Python)

Reading a CDF file

import pycdfpp

cdf = pycdfpp.load("my_data.cdf")

# Variables expose numpy arrays (zero-copy when possible)
data = cdf["variable_name"].values

# Global attributes
print(cdf.attributes["Project"][0])

# Variable attributes
print(cdf["variable_name"].attributes["UNITS"].value)

# Iterate over all variables
for name, var in cdf.items():
    print(f"{name}: shape={var.shape}, type={var.type}")

Loading from memory

import pycdfpp

# Load from any bytes-like object (useful with HTTP responses, S3, etc.)
with open("my_data.cdf", "rb") as f:
    cdf = pycdfpp.load(f.read())

Time conversions

CDFpp handles all three CDF time types (EPOCH, EPOCH16, TT2000) and converts them to numpy datetime64[ns] or Python datetime:

import pycdfpp
import numpy as np

cdf = pycdfpp.load("my_data.cdf")

# Convert any CDF time variable to numpy datetime64 (fast, ~2ns/element)
times = pycdfpp.to_datetime64(cdf["Epoch"])

# Or to Python datetime objects
times_dt = pycdfpp.to_datetime(cdf["Epoch"])

# Format as strings (e.g. for PDS4 compliance)
time_strings = pycdfpp.to_time_string(cdf["Epoch"], "%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ")
# array([b'2020-02-01T00:00:00.000000000Z', ...])

# Convert Python/numpy times to CDF types
tt2000_values = pycdfpp.to_tt2000(np.array(['2020-01-01', '2020-06-15'], dtype='datetime64[ns]'))
epoch_values = pycdfpp.to_epoch(np.array(['2020-01-01', '2020-06-15'], dtype='datetime64[ns]'))

Creating and writing CDF files

import pycdfpp
import numpy as np
from datetime import datetime

cdf = pycdfpp.CDF()

# Add global attributes (each entry is a list of values)
cdf.add_attribute("Project", ["MyMission"])
cdf.add_attribute("PI_name", ["Jane Doe"])

# Add a time variable with TT2000 encoding
times = np.arange('2020-01-01', '2020-01-02', dtype='datetime64[h]').astype('datetime64[ns]')
cdf.add_variable("Epoch", values=times, data_type=pycdfpp.DataType.CDF_TIME_TT2000)

# Add a data variable with variable attributes
cdf.add_variable("B_GSM",
    values=np.random.randn(24, 3).astype(np.float32),
    attributes={
        "FIELDNAM": ["Magnetic Field"],
        "UNITS": ["nT"],
        "DEPEND_0": ["Epoch"],
    })

# Save to disk
pycdfpp.save(cdf, "output.cdf")

# Or save to memory (returns bytes)
data = pycdfpp.save(cdf)

Compressed CDF files

import pycdfpp
import numpy as np

cdf = pycdfpp.CDF()
cdf.add_variable("data", values=np.zeros(10000, dtype=np.float64))

# Whole-file GZip compression
cdf.compression = pycdfpp.CompressionType.gzip_compression
pycdfpp.save(cdf, "compressed.cdf")

# Or per-variable compression
cdf2 = pycdfpp.CDF()
cdf2.add_variable("data",
    values=np.zeros(10000, dtype=np.float64),
    compression=pycdfpp.CompressionType.gzip_compression)

Filtering variables

import pycdfpp

cdf = pycdfpp.load("large_file.cdf")

# Keep only specific variables and attributes (returns a new CDF)
filtered = cdf.filter(variables=["Epoch", "B_GSM"], attributes=["Project"])

# Filter with a regex pattern
filtered = cdf.filter(variables="B_.*", attributes=".*")

# Filter with a callable
filtered = cdf.filter(variables=lambda var: var.name.startswith("B_"))

Cloning variables between CDF files

import pycdfpp

src = pycdfpp.load("source.cdf")
dst = pycdfpp.CDF()

# Clone a variable (deep copy, including its attributes)
dst.add_variable(src["Epoch"])
dst.add_variable(src["B_GSM"])

NumPy buffer protocol

Variables implement the Python buffer protocol, so they work directly with NumPy and any library that accepts array-like objects:

import pycdfpp
import numpy as np

cdf = pycdfpp.load("my_data.cdf")

# Direct numpy array construction (zero-copy for numeric types)
arr = np.array(cdf["B_GSM"])

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Quick start (C++)

Reading

#include "cdfpp/cdf-io/cdf-io.hpp"
#include <iostream>

int main()
{
    // cdf::io::load returns std::optional<CDF>
    if (auto cdf = cdf::io::load("my_data.cdf"))
    {
        for (const auto& [name, variable] : cdf->variables)
            std::cout << name << " shape: " << variable.shape() << "\n";

        for (const auto& [name, attribute] : cdf->attributes)
            std::cout << name << "\n";
    }
}

Writing

#include "cdfpp/cdf-io/cdf-io.hpp"

int main()
{
    cdf::CDF my_cdf;

    // Save to file (returns bool)
    cdf::io::save(my_cdf, "output.cdf");

    // Or save to memory (returns a vector<char>)
    auto data = cdf::io::save(my_cdf);
}

Loading from memory

#include "cdfpp/cdf-io/cdf-io.hpp"
#include <vector>

void process(const std::vector<char>& buffer)
{
    if (auto cdf = cdf::io::load(buffer.data(), buffer.size()))
    {
        // ...
    }
}

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Benchmarks

All benchmarks measured on a 16-core machine (5.1 GHz boost, 16 MB L3), release build (-O3). Source code in benchmarks/.

SIMD time conversions

Converting CDF time types to nanoseconds since 1970 (epochs/s, higher is better):

Conversion	64	1K	64K	1M	64M
TT2000 scalar	7.8e+08	8.7e+08	8.8e+08	8.6e+08	5.9e+08
TT2000 SIMD	2.5e+09	8.1e+09	5.3e+09	3.4e+09	1.5e+09
EPOCH scalar	2.2e+09	2.3e+09	2.2e+09	2.1e+09	1.1e+09
EPOCH SIMD	9.6e+09	1.4e+10	6.7e+09	3.8e+09	1.5e+09

SIMD vectorized TT2000 conversion peaks at ~8 billion epochs/s for L1/L2-resident data. EPOCH conversion (simpler, no leap-second table) peaks at ~14 billion epochs/s.

Leap-second lookup

Method	1K	64K	1M	64M
Branchless	9.1e+07	9.4e+07	9.5e+07	1.0e+08
Baseline	2.4e+08	2.4e+08	2.4e+08	2.4e+08

RLE compression (bytes/s)

Operation	1 KB	16 KB	64 KB	1 MB
Deflate	7.4e+08	6.9e+08	3.3e+08	2.7e+08
Inflate	1.8e+09	1.7e+09	1.8e+09	4.5e+08
Roundtrip	5.1e+08	5.0e+08	1.9e+08	1.7e+08

RLE inflate sustains ~1.8 GB/s for data that fits in cache.

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Features & roadmap

• Reading
  • CDF versions 2.2 through 3.x
  • Compressed files and variables (GZip, RLE)
  • Row and column major
  • Nested VXRs
  • Lazy variable loading
  • UTF-8 and ISO 8859-1 (Latin-1, auto-converted to UTF-8)
  • In-memory loading (std::vector<char>, char*, Python bytes)
  • DEC floating-point encoding (VAX, Alpha, Itanium)
  • Pad values
• Writing
  • Uncompressed and compressed files/variables
  • All numeric types, strings, datetime types
  • Pad values
• General
  • libdeflate for faster GZip
  • SIMD time conversions (AVX512/AVX2/SSE2 with runtime dispatch)
  • Leap-second handling
  • Python bindings with GIL-free I/O
  • Documentation

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Caveats

• NRV variables shape: PyCDFpp exposes the record count as the first dimension, so NRV variables will have shape (0, ...) or (1, ...).
• Reference invalidation: Python wrappers hold references into C++ containers. Adding or removing variables/attributes can invalidate them. Always re-fetch after mutation:

  # UNSAFE - ref may dangle after add_variable
  var = cdf["B_GSM"]
  cdf.add_variable("new_var", values=np.zeros(10))
  var.values  # potential segfault
  
  # SAFE - re-fetch
  cdf.add_variable("new_var", values=np.zeros(10))
  var = cdf["B_GSM"]

See the full documentation for more details.