South Africa Fetcher

Fetcher for South African river gauge data.

class rivretrieve.southafrica.SouthAfricaFetcher[source]

Bases: RiverDataFetcher

Fetches river gauge data from South Africa’s Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS).

Data Source: DWS Hydrology Services (https://www.dws.gov.za/Hydrology/Verified/HyData.aspx)

Supported Variables:

  • 'discharge_daily_mean' (m³/s)

  • 'discharge_instantaneous' (m³/s)

  • 'stage_instantaneous' (m)

static get_available_variables() → tuple[str, ...][source]

Returns a tuple of supported variables.

static get_cached_metadata() → DataFrame[source]

Retrieves a DataFrame of available South African gauge IDs and metadata.

This method loads the metadata from a cached CSV file located in the rivretrieve/cached_site_data/ directory.

Returns:

A DataFrame indexed by gauge_id, containing site metadata.

Return type:

pd.DataFrame

get_data(gauge_id: str, variable: str, start_date: str | None = None, end_date: str | None = None) → DataFrame[source]

Fetches and parses time series data for a specific gauge and variable.

This method retrieves the requested data from the provider’s API or data source, parses it, and returns it in a standardized pandas DataFrame format.

Parameters:

  • gauge_id – The site-specific identifier for the gauge.

  • variable – The variable to fetch. Must be one of the strings listed in the fetcher’s get_available_variables() output. These are typically defined in rivretrieve.constants.

  • start_date – Optional start date for the data retrieval in ‘YYYY-MM-DD’ format. If None, data is fetched from the earliest available date.

  • end_date – Optional end date for the data retrieval in ‘YYYY-MM-DD’ format. If None, data is fetched up to the latest available date.

Returns:

A pandas DataFrame indexed by datetime objects ('time') with a single column named after the requested variable. The DataFrame will be empty if no data is found for the given parameters.

Return type:

pd.DataFrame

Raises:

  • ValueError – If the requested variable is not supported by this fetcher.

  • requests.exceptions.RequestException – If a network error occurs during data download.

  • Exception – For other unexpected errors during data fetching or parsing.

get_metadata() → DataFrame

Fetches site metadata from the data provider.

Warning

This method is not implemented for all fetchers. Check the specific fetcher’s documentation.

Returns:

A DataFrame indexed by gauge_id, containing site metadata.

Return type:

pd.DataFrame

Raises:

NotImplementedError – If the method is not implemented for the specific fetcher.