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When a BUFR message is selected in the BUFR Message List panel the Message Contents panel in the right hand side of the window will show its metadata and data contents. This panel is divided into four tabs.

Data tab

The Data tab show the message contents in a hierarchical structure (as a tree). This tree is divided into two main branches:

  • the Header branch contains the BUFR header
  • the Data branch contains the data encoded in the message

The information presented in the tree is spread across four columns:

  • Key: the ecCodes key of the BUFR element. Keys come in the same order as they appear in the message.
  • Value: the decoded value presented in the given units. For elements of type CODE TABLE or FLAG TABLE the code/flag value is shown here as an integer. The actual meaning (as a textual description) of these values are given in the Key information panel (see below).
  • Units: the units
  • Extra: this column contains the bitmap assigned to the given key

The Key information panel

When a key is selected in the tree the Key information panel on the right shows detailed information about it.

CODE/FLAG values

For BUFR elements with the units of CODE TABLE or FLAG TABLE a worded description, taken from the Code/Flag tables,  of the actual value is also shown here.

If a key contains multiple values (i.e. a vector) the the Key information panel show all the values. It can happen in either of these cases:

  • the key is unexpandedDescriptors from the BUFR header
  • the message contains compressed subsets

Compressed tab

This tab contains all the data values for a compressed message as huge table.

Tables tab

This tabs gives information about the tables ecCodes used to decode the current message.

Debug tab

When clicking on this tab ecCodes is rerun to decode the message again with the ECCODES_DEBUG env variable set to 1. The information generated during this run is then shown in the tab.

Please note that this process can be significantly slower than decoding the message in non-debug mode.