ecCodes BUFR keys

ecCodes uses a camel-case naming convention for the BUFR keys e.g. “typicalYear” instead of “typical_year”. The keys are case-sensitive and must be used exactly as defined in the ecCodes BUFR tables. Some examples of ecCodes BUFR keys are:

latitude
longitude
heightOfStationGroundAboveMeanSeaLevel

Ranked keys

A key can appear multiple times in a BUFR message/subset, in which case it is said to have a rank. The first occurrence of the key has rank=1, the second occurrence has rank=2 and so on. The rank is indicated by a prefix in the key name e.g. “#1#latitude” for the first occurrence of “latitude” and “#2#latitude” for the second occurrence. Some examples of ranked keys:

"#1#latitude" # rank=1, first occurrence of "latitude"
"#2#latitude" # rank=2, second occurrence of "latitude"

Note

Only the flat-reader allows to use ranked keys in pdbufr.

Key attributes

Each key can have attributes e.g. "latitude->code". Attributes are not supported in pdbufr.

The count key

The "count" key is generated by ecCodes and it refers to the message index. This is supported by pdbufr but please note that message indexing starts at 1 and not at 0!