The coordinates submodule contains code to read coordinates, either single frames (e.g. the PDB module) or trajectories (such as the DCD reader). All readers are supposed to expose a Reader object that presents a common Trajectory API to other code.
The Universe contains the API entry point attribute
Universe.trajectory
that points to the actual Reader object; all Readers are supposed to be accessible through this entry point in the same manner (“duck typing”).
In order to write coordinates, a factory function is provided (MDAnalysis.coordinates.core.writer()) which is made available as MDAnalysis.Writer()) that returns a Writer appropriate for the desired file format (as indicated by the filename suffix). Furthermore, a trajectory Reader can also have a method Writer() that returns an appropriate Writer for the file format of the trajectory.
In analogy to MDAnalysis.coordinates.core.writer(), there is also a MDAnalysis.coordinates.core.reader() function available to return a trajectory Reader instance although this is often not needed because the Universe class can choose an appropriate reader automatically.
Normally, one does not explicitly need to select a reader. This is handled automatically when creating a Universe and the appropriate reader for the file type is selected (typically by the file extension but this choice can be overriden with the format argument to Universe).
A typical approach is to generate a new trajectory from an old one, e.g. to only keep the protein:
u = MDAnalysis.Universe(PDB, XTC)
protein = u.selectAtoms("protein")
with MDAnalysis.Writer("protein.xtc", protein.numberOfAtoms()) as W:
for ts in u.trajectory:
W.write(protein)
Using the with() statement will automatically close the trajectory when the last frame has been written.
The table below lists the coordinate file formats understood by MDAnalysis. The emphasis is on formats that are used in popular molecular dynamics codes. By default, MDAnalysis figures out formats by looking at the extension. Thus, a DCD file always has to end with ”.dcd” to be recognized as such unless the format is explicitly specified with the format keyword to Universe or load_new(). A number of files are also recognized when they are compressed with gzip or bzip2 such as ”.xyz.bz2”.
Name | extension | IO | remarks |
---|---|---|---|
CHARMM, NAMD | dcd | r/w | standard CHARMM binary trajectory; endianness is autodetected. Fixed atoms may not be handled correctly (requires testing). Module MDAnalysis.coordinates.DCD |
LAMMPS | dcd, data | r/w r | CHARMM-style binary trajectory; endianness is autodetected. Units are appropriate for LAMMPS. Module MDAnalysis.coordinates.LAMMPS Single frames can be read from .data files. |
Gromacs | xtc | r/w | Compressed (lossy) xtc trajectory format. Module MDAnalysis.coordinates.XTC |
Gromacs | trr | r/w | Full precision trr trajectory. Coordinates and velocities are processed. Module MDAnalysis.coordinates.TRR |
XYZ | xyz | r/w | Generic white-space separate XYZ format; can be compressed (gzip or bzip2). Module MDAnalysis.coordinates.XYZ |
AMBER | trj, mdcrd | r | formatted (ASCII) trajectories; the presence of a periodic box is autodetected (experimental). Module MDAnalysis.coordinates.TRJ |
AMBER | ncdf | r/w | binary (NetCDF) trajectories are fully supported with optional netcdf4-python module (coordinates and velocities). Module MDAnalysis.coordinates.TRJ |
Brookhaven [1] | pdb | r/w | a simplified PDB format (as used in MD simulations) is read by default; the full format can be read by supplying the permissive=False flag to MDAnalysis.Universe. Multiple frames (MODEL) are supported but require the multiframe keyword. Module MDAnalysis.coordinates.PDB |
XPDB | pdb | r | Extended PDB format (can use 5-digit residue numbers). To use, specify the format “XPBD” explicitly: Universe(..., format="XPDB"). Module :MDAnalysis.coordinates.PDB` |
PDBQT [1] | pdbqt | r/w | file format used by AutoDock with atom types t and partial charges q. Module: MDAnalysis.coordinates.PDBQT |
PQR [1] | pqr | r/w | PDB-like but whitespace-separated files with charge and radius information. Module MDAnalysis.coordinates.PQR |
GROMOS96 [1] | gro | r/w | basic GROMOS96 format (velocities as well). Module MDAnalysis.coordinates.GRO |
CHARMM [1] | crd | r/w | “CARD” coordinate output from CHARMM; deals with either standard or EXTended format. Module MDAnalysis.coordinates.CRD |
DESRES [1] | dms | r | DESRES Molecular Structure file format reader. Module MDAnalysis.coordinates.DMS |
IBIsCO/YASP | trz | r/w | Binary IBIsCO or YASP trajectories Module MDAnalysis.coordinates.TRZ |
MOL2 | mol2 | r/w | Text-based Tripos molecular structure format MDAnalysis.coordinates.MOL2 |
[1] | (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) This format can also be used to provide basic topology information (i.e. the list of atoms); it is possible to create a full Universe by simply providing a file of this format: u = Universe(filename) |
The Trajectory API defines how classes have to be structured that allow reading and writing of coordinate files. By following the API it is possible to seamlessly enhance the I/O capabilities of MDAnalysis. The actual underlying I/O code can be written in C or python or a mixture thereof.
Typically, each format resides in its own module, named by the format specifier (and using upper case by convention).
Reader and Writer classes are derived from base classes in MDAnalysis.coordinates.base.
In various places, MDAnalysis tries to automatically select appropriate formats (e.g. by looking at file extensions). In order to allow it to choose the correct format, all I/O classes must be registered in one of three dictionaries with the format (typically the file extension in upper case):
A Timestep instance holds data for the current frame. It is updated whenever a new frame of the trajectory is read.
Timestep classes are derived from MDAnalysis.coordinates.base.Timestep, which is the primary implementation example (and used directly for the DCDReader).
- __init__(arg)
depending on the type of arg, Timestep instances are created in different ways:
- int
- empty Timestep for arg atoms (allocate arrays etc)
- Timestep
- makes a deep copy of the arg
- numpy.ndarray
- update the Timesteps positions array with the contents of arg
Anything else raises an exception; in particular it is not possible to create a “empty” Timestep instance.
- __getitem__(atoms)
- position(s) of atoms; can be a slice or numpy array and then returns coordinate array
- __len__()
- number of coordinates (atoms) in the frame
- __iter__()
- iterator over all coordinates
- copy()
- deep copy of the instance
- _init_unitcell
- hook that returns empty data structure for the unitcell representation of this particular file format; called from within __init__() to initialize Timestep._unitcell.
- numatoms
- number of atoms in the frame
- frame
- current frame number (1-based)
- dimensions
system box dimensions (x, y, z, alpha, beta, gamma) (typically implemented as a property because it needs to translate whatever is in the underlying _unitcell attribute. Also comes with a setter that takes a MDAnalysis box so that one can do
Timestep.dimensions = [A, B, C, alpha, beta, gamma]which then converts automatically to the underlying representation and stores it in Timestep._unitcell.
- volume
- system box volume (derived as the determinant of the box vectors of dimensions)
These attributes are set directly by the underlying trajectory readers. Normally the user should not have to directly access those (although in some cases it is convenient to directly use _pos).
- _pos
- raw coordinates, a numpy.float32 array; X = _pos[:,0], Y = _pos[:,1], Z = _pos[:,2]
- _unitcell
native unit cell description; the format depends on the underlying trajectory format. A user should use the dimensions attribute to access the data in a canonical format instead of accessing Timestep._unitcell directly.
The method Timestep._init_unitcell() is a hook to initialize this attribute.
Optional attributes (only implemented by some readers); if an optional attribute does not exist, a AttributeError is raised and the calling code should handle this gracefully.
- _velocities
- raw velocities, a numpy.float32 array containing velocities (similar to _pos)
Trajectory readers are derived from MDAnalysis.coordinates.base.Reader. Typically, many methods and attributes are overriden.
The MDAnalysis.coordinates.DCD.DCDReader class is the primary implementation example.
Mandatory methods
The following methods must be implemented in a Reader class.
- __init__(filename, **kwargs)
open filename; other kwargs are processed as needed and the Reader is free to ignore them. Typically, MDAnalysis supplies as much information as possible to the Reader in kwargs; at the moment the following data are supplied in keywords when a trajectory is loaded from within MDAnalysis.Universe:
- numatoms: the number of atoms (known from the topology)
- __iter__()
allow iteration from beginning to end:
for ts in trajectory: print ts.frame- close()
- close the file and cease I/O
- __del__()
- ensure that the trajectory is closed
- next()
- advance to next time step or raise IOError when moving past the last frame
- rewind()
- reposition to first frame
- __entry__()
- entry method of a Context Manager (returns self)
- __exit__()
- exit method of a Context Manager, should call close().
Optional methods
Not all trajectory formats support the following methods, either because the data are not available or the methods have not been implemented. Code should deal with missing methods gracefully.
- __len__()
- number of frames in trajectory
- __getitem__(arg)
advance to time step arg = frame and return Timestep; or if arg is a slice, then return an iterator over that part of the trajectory.
The first functionality allows one to randomly access frames in the trajectory:
universe.trajectory[314]would load frame 314 into the current Timestep.
Using slices allows iteration over parts of a trajectory
for ts in universe.trajectory[1000:2000]: process_frame(ts) # do somethingor skipping frames
for ts in universe.trajectory[1000::100]: process_frame(ts) # do somethingThe last example starts reading the trajectory at frame 1000 and reads every 100th frame until the end.
The performance of the __getitem__() method depends on the underlying trajectory reader and if it can implement random access to frames. In many cases this is not easily (or reliably) implementable and thus one is restricted to sequential iteration.
If the Reader is not able to provide random access to frames then it should raise TypeError on indexing. It is possible to partially implement __getitem__ (as done on MDAnalysis.coordinates.base.Reader.__getitem__ where slicing the full trajectory is equivalent to MDAnalysis.coordinates.base.Reader.__iter__ (which is always implemented) and other slices raise TypeError.
Note
__getitem__ uses 0-based indices for frames so that indexing and slicing works exactly as in Python. However, the Timestep.frame attribute (the “frame number”) is 1-based. Thus, the first frame in a trajectory can be accessed as trajectory[0] (frame index 0) and the corresponding frame number is 1 (trajectory.ts.frame == 1).
- Writer(filename, **kwargs)
returns a Writer which is set up with the same parameters as the trajectory that is being read (e.g. time step, length etc), which facilitates copying and simple on-the-fly manipulation.
If no Writer is defined then a NotImplementedError is raised.
The kwargs can be used to customize the Writer as they are typically passed through to the init method of the Writer, with sensible defaults filled in; the actual keyword arguments depend on the Writer.
- timeseries(atomGroup, [start[,stop[,skip[,format]]]])
- returns a subset of coordinate data
- correl(timeseriesCollection[,start[,stop[,skip]]])
- populate a MDAnalysis.core.Timeseries.TimeseriesCollection object with observable timeseries computed from the trajectory
- filename
- filename of the trajectory
- numatoms
- number of atoms (coordinate sets) in a frame (constant)
- numframes
- total number of frames (if known) – None if not known
- fixed
- bool, saying if there are fixed atoms (e.g. dcds)
- skip
- step size for iterating through the trajectory [1]
- skip_timestep
- number of integrator steps between frames + 1 (i.e. the stride at which the MD simulation was sampled)
- delta
- integrator time step (in native units); hence the “length” of a trajctory frame is skip_timestep*delta time units
- periodic
- contains box information for periodic boundary conditions
- ts
- the Timestep object; typically customized for each trajectory format and derived from base.Timestep.
- units
- dictionary with keys time, length, speed, force and the appropriate unit (e.g. ‘AKMA’ and ‘Angstrom’ for Charmm dcds, ‘ps’ and ‘nm’ for Gromacs trajectories, None and ‘Angstrom’ for PDB). Any field not used should be set to None.
- format
- string that identifies the file format, e.g. “DCD”, “PDB”, “CRD”, “XTC”, “TRR”; this is typically the file extension in upper case.
- dt
- time between frames in ps; a managed attribute (read only) that computes on the fly skip_timestep * delta and converts to the MDAnalysis base unit for time (pico seconds by default)
- totaltime
- total length of the trajectory = numframes * dt
- time
- time of the current time step, in MDAnalysis time units (ps)
- frame
- frame number of the current time step (1-based)
Optional attributes
- compressed
- string that identifies the compression (e.g. “gz” or “bz2”) or None.
Trajectory writers are derived from MDAnalysis.coordinates.base.Writer. They are used to write multiple frames to a trajectory file. Every time the write() method is called, another frame is appended to the trajectory.
Typically, many methods and attributes are overriden.
Signature:
W = TrajectoryWriter(filename,numatoms,**kwargs)
W.write_next_timestep(Timestep)
or:
W.write(AtomGroup) # write a selection
W.write(Universe) # write a whole universe
W.write(Timestep) # same as write_next_timestep()
- __init__(filename,numatoms[,start[,step[,delta[,remarks]]]])
- opens filename and writes header if required by format
- write(obj)
- write Timestep data in obj
- write_next_timestep([timestep])
- write data in timestep to trajectory file
- convert_dimensions_to_unitcell(timestep)
- take the dimensions from the timestep and convert to the native unitcell representation of the format
- close()
- close file and finish I/O
- __del__()
- ensures that close() is called
- filename
- name of the trajectory file
- start, stop, step
- first and last frame number (1-based) and step
- units
- dictionary with keys time, length, speed, force and the appropriate unit (e.g. ‘AKMA’ and ‘Angstrom’ for Charmm dcds, ‘ps’ and ‘nm’ for Gromacs trajectories, None and ‘Angstrom’ for PDB). Any field not used should be set to None.
- format
- string that identifies the file format, e.g. “DCD”, “PDB”, “CRD”, “XTC”, “TRR”
Optional
- ts
- Timestep instance
A single frame writer is a special case of a trajectory writer in that it writes only a single coordinate frame to a file, for instance, a pdb or gro file. Unlike trajectory formats, which only contains coordinates, single frame formats contain much more information (e.g. atom and residue names and numbers) and hence it is possible to write selections of atoms in a meaningful way.
Signature:
W = FrameWriter(filename, **kwargs)
W.write(AtomGroup)
W.write(Universe)
The blanket kwargs is required so that one can pass the same kind of arguments (filename and numatoms) as for the Trajectory writers. In this way, the simple writer() factory function can be used for all writers.
The following data structures connect reader/writer classes to their format identifiers. They are documented for programmers who want to enhance MDAnalysis; the casual user is unlikely to access them directly.
Some formats can either write single frames or trajectories (such as PDB). In theses cases, the kind of writer is selected with the multiframe keyword to MDAnalysis.coordinates.core.get_writer() (or the writer itself).
standard trajectory readers (dict with identifier as key and reader class as value)
readers of files that contain both topology/atom data and coordinates (currently only the keys are used)
hack: readers that ignore most errors (permissive=True); at the moment the same as _trajectory_readers with the exception of the the PDB reader (PDBReader is replaced by
formats of readers that can also handle gzip or bzip2 compressed files
frame writers: export to single frame formats such as PDB, gro, crd Signature:
W = FrameWriter(filename)
W.write(AtomGroup)
trajectory writers: export frames, typically only saving coordinates Signature:
W = TrajectoryWriter(filename,numatoms,**kwargs)
W.write_next_timestep(TimeStep)
W.write(Timestep)
W.write(AtomGroup)
W.write(Universe)