Standardising outputs from the config server

[olliesilvester]

From discussion with @Relm-Arrowny and @callumforrester during an Athena drop-in session

There are a few common types of files we expect to be read from the config server. The best example is lookup tables. It would be nice from the Bluesky point of view if, for common file types like lookup tables, there was a standard format for this file. With this, utility functions like value conversions can be made in dodal and shared across beamlines.

It will be very difficult to standardise the actual lookup tables themselves, so the proposed solution is to create lookup table converters for a given beamline / science village in the config-server repo. A converter would know the format of a beamline's lookup table, and convert it to the agreed upon standard format.

Dodal/bluesky can then tell the config server via request metadata which converter is needed.

[callumforrester]

Dodal/bluesky can then tell the config server via request metadata which converter is needed.

Can actually be simpler than this, you can have some pre-existing metadata to tell you what format the raw table is in (you could even work it out based on which directory it is in, but there be dragons) and you already know your target format so then you just need to look a converter up internally. As long as you have one the client doesn't need to know anything special.

[Relm-Arrowny]

@DiamondLightSource/smg

[olliesilvester]

Is json suitable for the standardised format here? Can easily be converted into a python dict

[Relm-Arrowny]

Is json suitable for the standardised format here? Can easily be converted into a python dict

I would think so at least for @DiamondLightSource/smg, we currently model_dump() from pydanic or use dictionary direction in dodal/bluesky.