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Install

pip install oxenai

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Clone Repository

Clone a repository from the Oxen Hub or a your own oxen-server. Detailed documentation for the clone method can be found in the API Documentation.

import oxen
oxen.clone("ox/SpanishToEnglish")

This will create a directory called SpanishToEnglish in your current working directory and download the latest version of the repository.

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Private Repositories

Not all repositories are public. If you are trying to clone a private repository, you will need to configure auth before you can clone.

If you try to clone a repository you do not have access to, and you have not configured auth, you will see the following error:

ValueError: oxen authentication token not found, obtain one from your administrator and configure with:

oxen config --auth <HOST> <TOKEN>

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Obtain Auth Token

Before you can push to a remote repository, you must have permissions to do so. Permissions are handled through an auth_token that is passed in with the request.

You can obtain an auth_token by creating an account on Oxen.ai and going to your profile.

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Set Auth Token

To set your auth token, you can either set it through the command line interface or directly in python.

This will write the auth token to a file in ~/.config/oxen/auth_config.toml for future use. If you set up your own oxen-server you can generate custom auth tokens there.

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Setup User

In order for Oxen to know who is committing and where to sync to by default, you must call config_user and pass in the name and email you would like to use in your commit messages.

from oxen.user import config_user
config_user("YOUR NAME", "YOUR EMAIL")

This will save a file in ~/.config/oxen/user_config.toml that contains your user configuration.

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Initialize Local Repository

If you are creating a new repository from scratch, you can initialize it with the init method.

We will be using a fictional repository called CatsVsDogs for this example.

import oxen
import os

# Create an empty directory named CatsVsDogs
directory = "CatsVsDogs"
os.makedirs(directory)

# Initialize the Oxen Repository
repo = oxen.init(directory)

This will create a .oxen directory to keep track of changes as you make them.

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Load Existing Repository

Use the repo class to interact with a repository that has already been initialized.

from oxen import Repo

# Load the repository from the CatsVsDogs directory
repo = Repo("CatsVsDogs")
# Check the status of the repository
print(repo.status())

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Add Files

Now let’s create a README.md file and add it to the local staging area. This will not commit the changes to the repository, but it will prepare them to be committed.

# ... continue from previous example

# Create a README.md file
filename = os.path.join(repo.path, "README.md")
with open(filename, "w") as f:
    f.write("# Cats vs. Dogs\n\nWhich is it? We will be using machine learning to find out!")

# Add the README.md file to the staging area
repo.add(filename)

# Confirm that the file has been staged
print(repo.status())

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Commit Changes

Now that we have added the README.md file to the staging area, we can commit the changes to the repository.

# ... continue from previous example

# Commit the changes to the repository
repo.commit("Adding README.md")

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Diff Changes

Oxen.ai has powerful diff tools built in that allow you to see the changes to files between commits, branches, and more.

result = oxen.diff("README.md")
print(result.get())

To learn more about diffs checkout the diff documentation or the Python API Documentation.

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Push To Remote

It’s one thing to version your data locally, but where the real power comes in is when you can share your data with others. Oxen repositories can be pushed to a remote repository hosted on Oxen Hub or your own oxen-server.

There are a few steps when pushing to a remote for the first time.

  1. Create Remote
  2. Point Local to Remote
  3. Push Changes

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Create Remote

Before you can push to a remote repository, you must create it. This can be done with the create_repo method.

from oxen.remote_repo import create_repo

# Create a remote repository
remote_name = "MyNamespace/CatsVsDogs"
remote_repo = create_repo(remote_name)

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Point Local to Remote

Now that we have created the remote repository, we need to point our local repository to sync to it. This can be done with the set_remote method.

from oxen import Repo

# Load the local repository
repo = Repo("CatsVsDogs")

# Point the local repository to the remote
repo.set_remote("origin", remote_repo.url())

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Push Changes

Now that we have created the remote repository and pointed our local repository to it, we can push our changes to the remote repository.

# Push the changes to the remote repository
repo.push()

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Full Push Example

The end to end workflow from scratch looks like this:

from oxen import Repo
from oxen.remote_repo import create_repo
from oxen.auth import config_auth

# 0. Load the local repository
repo = Repo("CatsVsDogs")

# 1. Configure Authentication
config_auth("YOUR_AUTH_TOKEN")

# 2. Create a remote repository
remote_name = "MyNamespace/CatsVsDogs"
repo = create_repo(remote_name)

# 3. Point the local repository to the remote
repo.set_remote("origin", repo.url)

# 4. Push the changes to the remote repository
repo.push()

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Pull Data

Now that we have pushed our changes to the remote repository, we can pull them down to another machine.

import oxen
import os

repo_path = "CatsVsDogs"
if os.path.exists(repo_path):
  # if you already have a local copy of the repository, you can load it
  repo = oxen.Repo(repo_path)
else:
  # if you don't have a local copy of the repository, you can clone it
  repo = oxen.clone("ox/CatsVsDogs")

# Pull the latest changes from the remote repository
repo.pull()

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Branching

Branching is a powerful feature of Oxen that allows you to create a named version of your data without affecting the original version. This is useful when you want to experiment with your changes affecting the original version.

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Create Branch

To create a new branch, use the Repo.checkout method.

from oxen import Repo

repo = Repo("CatsVsDogs")
repo.checkout("add-dogs", create=True)

This both creates the branch and checks it out (the command line equivalent of oxen checkout -b add-dogs).

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List Branches

To list all of the branches in a repository, use the Repo.branches method.

from oxen import Repo

repo = Repo("CatsVsDogs")
print(repo.branches())

[Branch(name=add-dogs, commit_id=3168391af834ac18), Branch(name=main, commit_id=3168391af834ac18)]

As you can see there should be a main branch and a add-dogs branch, each tied to a commit id. The commit ids will be the same at this point, because the branches have not diverged in content.

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Next Steps

Now that you have learned the basics of Oxen, the rest of the workflow is very similar to git. You can dive deeper into the API Documentation to learn more about the methods available to you.

💻 Command Line Interface📡 Oxen Server