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iRods clients

There are a few iRods clients. This is the list of the most populars clients:

  • iCommands
  • python
  • java
  • davrods
  • iBridges
  • gocmd
  • http api
  • Others

iCommands

The oldest and most mature interface for irods. Has all the functionality you need as a user or an admin of irods. Needs a linux machine to install and run.

python

A mature interface where you can speak python to irods. All the operations you want to do as a user are present. A lot of experience is present inside WUR. For admins some operations are not there, but for all automation tasks this will work. Python is available across all operating systems, so you can run this on windows, linux and mac.

java

An interface where you can speak java to irods. All the operations you want to do as a user are present, but there are less updates tha to the python interface. A JVM is available across all operating systems, so you can run this on windows, linux and mac.

davrods

A webdav based gui running on apache that you can install in irods and where you can browse the files. If you use webdav you can mount irods on your windows machine, as well as open it in your browser. It has some issues with caching, so we mainly consider it for browsing files, not so much for uploading files. Also, you cannot do anything else than file browisng. You cannot see or edit metadata, authorisations or execute rules.

iBridges

iBridges is a more generic purpose gui based on python. It is runnable across all operating systems. It has browsing, uploading, downloading, metadata, authorisations and querying functionality. It will serve well for basic usage, but you cannot execute rules with it(yet?). While you can use it for uploading and downloading, when using large volumes or size of files it might be wiser to have your own python script.

gocmd

Gomd is a CLI and an alternative for iCommands written in the go language. You can run it on any OS, but it has a bit less functionality.

http api

The http api is a generic API that you can use in any programming language you like. This is still in beta stage, and needs to be separately installed. In WUR WEcR is experimenting with this, and we offer it only on their irods system for now. It does seem to have a lot of functionality for both users and admins, so in the future this could become more used.

Others

There are numerous other interfaces developed that we did not yet all investigate, like for example: irods as an S3 endpoint, irods as a linux mountpoint.