---
id: h5grove
version: "4.0.0"
license: MIT License Copyright (c) 2021 European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated… (full text in the JSON record)
license_treatment: permissive
maintenance: active
---

# h5grove — Core utilities to serve HDF5 file contents

License: permissive · Maintenance: active · Downloads: 125.7K/mo

## What it is and what it does

h5grove is a Python library for building backends that expose HDF5 file contents over the network. Rather than being a complete server, it provides reusable utilities that solve recurring problems in HDF5 serving: resolving external links, handling dataset compression and slicing, and encoding data consistently for JSON transport (including special handling for NaN and Infinity). It wraps h5py for file access and depends on numpy, orjson, tifffile, and typing-extensions.

The package is designed for developers building custom HDF5 backends, with optional integrations for FastAPI, Flask, and Tornado. You install the core package and add framework-specific extras only when needed. It's actively maintained, supports current Python versions (3.10+), and carries no known security vulnerabilities.

Use it for:

- Build a REST API to query and download slices of large HDF5 datasets stored on disk.
- Serve scientific instrument data (common in synchrotron facilities) to web clients without reimplementing link resolution and compression logic.
- Create a custom HDF5 viewer backend that handles external file references and encodes numeric data safely for JSON.
- Integrate HDF5 file access into an existing FastAPI or Flask application with minimal boilerplate.

## Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts above — verify before relying.

h5grove provides building blocks for serving HDF5 file contents—attributes, metadata, and data—via web backends, handling common problems like external link resolution, dataset compression/slicing, and JSON-safe data encoding.

Yes, if you are building a backend to serve HDF5 files and want to reuse battle-tested utilities for common problems (link resolution, compression, JSON encoding). No, if you only need to read HDF5 files in a local Python script—h5py alone is sufficient. Yes-with-conditions if you plan to use the web framework integrations: verify that the FastAPI/Flask/Tornado extras match your framework version and production readiness expectations.

## Install

pip install h5grove
uv add h5grove
poetry add h5grove

## Installing h5grove

Before you install: Low friction: pure-Python wheel with five stable runtime dependencies (h5py, numpy, orjson, tifffile, typing-extensions). Active maintenance with a release 122 days ago and commits through April 2026.

License in practice: MIT License (permissive): you can use, modify, and distribute h5grove freely in commercial and private projects, provided you include the original copyright notice and license text.

Quickstart:

pip install h5grove

import h5grove
import h5py

with h5py.File('data.h5', 'r') as f:
    # Use h5grove utilities to access and serve HDF5 content
    pass

Requires Python 3.10 or later; h5py requires HDF5 libraries on the system.

Verify before relying:

- Whether the package provides ready-to-use server implementations or only low-level utilities for custom backends.
- Performance characteristics when serving large HDF5 datasets or handling concurrent requests.
- Whether FastAPI, Flask, and Tornado integrations are production-ready or experimental.

## Package facts

- License: MIT License Copyright (c) 2021 European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated… (full text in the JSON record) (permissive)
- Python support: supports_current
- Install friction: low
- Maintenance: active
- Downloads: 125.7K/month (top 15,000 on PyPI)
- Known vulnerabilities: none known

## Tags

HDF5 file server utilities, serve HDF5 data over HTTP, HDF5 backend framework, HDF5 metadata and attributes API, HDF5 web service toolkit, hdf5, data-serving, scientific-data

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