Navigate back: Main / Getting Started with HDF5

Overview

The HDF5 C++ API provides object-oriented wrappers for the HDF5 C Library, enabling modern C++ applications to leverage HDF5's powerful data management capabilities with:

Automatic resource management through RAII
Exception-based error handling
Type-safe interfaces
STL integration (std::string support)

Prerequisites

Users should be familiar with:

HDF5 concepts (files, groups, datasets, attributes, datatypes, dataspaces)
Basic C++ programming (classes, exceptions, templates)
The HDF5 Reference Manual for underlying C API concepts

C API to C++ Class Mapping

The C++ classes closely mirror the HDF5 C API modules:

C API Module	C++ Class	Purpose
H5A (Attributes)	H5::Attribute	Metadata attached to objects
H5D (Datasets)	H5::DataSet	Data storage and I/O
H5S (Dataspaces)	H5::DataSpace	Dimensional structure of data
H5T (Datatypes)	H5::DataType	Data type definitions
H5F (Files)	H5::H5File	File access and management
H5G (Groups)	H5::Group	Hierarchical organization
H5P (Property Lists)	H5::PropList + subclasses	Configuration parameters
H5L/H5O (Links/Objects)	H5::Location	Management of links and objects
H5E (Errors)	H5::Exception	Error reporting

Quick Start Examples

Creating groups and datasets: h5tutr_crtgrp.cpp h5tutr_crtdat.cpp
Writing/Reading data h5tutr_rdwt.cpp h5tutr_subset.cpp
Working with attributes h5tutr_crtatt.cpp
Extendible datasets h5tutr_extend.cpp
Chunked/Compressed datasets h5tutr_cmprss.cpp

See the See Examples from Learning the Basics for additional examples.

Building Applications

Please refer to the release_docs/INSTALL_CMake.txt file under the top directory of the HDF5 source code or INSTALL_CMake.txt on GitHub for information about installing, building, and testing the C++ API.

Navigate back: Main / Getting Started with HDF5