How convert this type of data <hdf5 object reference> to something more readable in the python?

Question

I have quite big dataset. All information stored in the hdf5 format file. I found h5py library for python. All works properly except of the

[<HDF5 object reference>]

I have no idea how to convert it in something more readable. Can I do it at all ? Because documentation in this question slightly hard for me. Maybe there are some others solutions with different languages not only Python. I appreciate every help I will get.

In the ideal it should be link to the file.

It's the part of my code:

import numpy as np
import h5py 
import time

f = h5py.File('myfile1.mat','r') 
#print f.keys()
test = f['db/path']
st = test[3]
print(  st )

st output is [<HDF5 object reference>]

test output is <HDF5 dataset "path": shape (73583, 1), type "|O8">

And I expect instead [<HDF5 object reference>] something like that one: /home/directory/file1.jpg. If it is possible of course.

Answer 1

My friend answered my question and I understood how it was easy. But I spent more than 4 hours solving my small problem. The solution is:

import numpy as np
import h5py 
import time

f = h5py.File('myfile1.mat','r') 
test = f['db/path']
st = test[0][0]
obj = f[st]
str1 = ''.join(chr(i) for i in obj[:])
print( str1 )

I'm sorry if don't specified my problem accurately. But this the solution I tried to find.

Answer 2

You can define your own __str__() or __repr__() method for this class, or create a simple wrapper which formats a string with the information you want to see. Based on quick browsing of the documentation, you could do something like

from h5py import File

class MyHDF5File (File):
    def __repr__ (self):
        return '<HDF5File({0})>'.format(self.filename)