Difficulty accessing dandisets in conda environment

[arubiano98]

Hello! I need to access a couple of dandisets(.nwb files), and I'm currently using the Spyder GUI (Python 3.8, conda), so I chose to use conda install -c conda-forge dandi for the most part, rather than the pip install alternative. With this in mind, I can't seem to download my target files, even when I do use pip install dandi.

Essentially, if I use dandi download <dandiset HTML> , an invalid syntax error directed at the word download is thrown; on the other hand, if I try to call the download function in a different way, such as dandi.download(<dandiset HTML>), then a 'module' object is not callable error is thrown.

Again, this happens regardless of which command I use to install the dandi library in the first place. I have also tried to use different methods from the NWB website without much success, but perhaps that's simply because I don't fully understand the documentation. Any help would be much appreciated!

[jwodder]

The "invalid syntax" error suggests that you're trying to run dandi download from within a Python REPL. That's not right; you need to run it directly from a command-line shell.

[bendichter]

@arubiano98

Yes, dandi download <dandiset HTML> should be run from a command-line shell such as Terminal. You might be able to get away with:

!dandi download <dandiset HTML> from within your Spyder Python session window. I don't know spyder, but this is generally the command to run a command-line command directly from an IPython session, so I'm guessing it will work in Spyder.

[arubiano98]

Thank you both, that was definitely the issue and I got around it by using !dandi download <dandiset HTML> as @bendichter suggested! Now I just have to figure out how to access the .nwb file that was downloaded from the dandiset. Thanks again!