Get started with neonutilities

The neonutilities Python package provides utilities for discovering, downloading, and working with data files published by the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON). neonutilities provides functions for downloading all types of NEON data (tabular, hierarchical, image) and for joining tabular data files across dates and sites.

Install neonutilities

neonutilities has several Python package dependencies including: pandas, pyarrow, pyproj, requests.

From PyPI

Installing with pip or uv will install dependencies as well; if there is a problem, use the requirements file in the package documentation.

# with pip
pip install neonutilities

# with uv
uv pip install neonutilities

From conda-forge

You can setup an environment that includes all dependencies (including Python) with the following command line operations.

With Pixi

Pixi environments are fully reproducible by default. From your project directory, initialize a Pixi workspace and then add neonutilities

pixi init
pixi add neonutilities

You can optionally activate an interactive shell with the environment loaded with

pixi shell

With conda

Create a conda environment and install neonutilities from the conda-forge channel

conda create --name neon-env
conda config --name neon-env --add channels conda-forge
conda config --name neon-env --remove channels defaults
conda install --name neon-env neonutilities

and then activate the conda environment

conda activate neon-env

From GitHub

We recommend installing from the above package indexes, because the versions of the package hosted there have been finalized. The development version on GitHub is likely to be unstable as updates may be in progress. To install the development version anyway:

pip install git+https://github.com/NEONScience/NEON-utilities-python.git@main

Once neonutilities is installed you can import it into Python:

>>> import neonutilities as nu

For further instructions in using the package, see Tutorials.