How to retrieve data when providing a PI tag name directly

[alexjj]

Feature request

Abstract

The documentation uses points = server.search('*')[0] to get a PI tag to then retrieve data in various ways. It would be good to add an example that shows how the user can provide a tag with a name they already know e.g. my_pi_tag.pv

Motivation and summary

I generally think it's a common occurrence for the user to already know the name of tags they want to retrieve data for.

Suggested solution

I can use the search function to do it e.g. points = server.search('my_pi_tag.pv')[0] but perhaps something like this would be of use:

with PI.PIServer() as server:
    tag = server.get_tag('my_pi_tag.pv')
    data = tag.recorded_values('*-48h', '*')
    print(data)

[Hugovdberg]

Thanks for the suggestion. I was actually thinking about adding a new keyword argument simplify to the server.search method. That would return a single point if the point name was specified exactly, while returning a list of points if necessary.
It is also related to #74, where the returned list would allow you to extract data directly from multiple points. This could possibly negate the need for the simplify argument on the search method.

[Hugovdberg]

Closing this issue to merge it with #74.