The h5py package provides both a high- and low-level interface to the HDF5 library from Python. The low-level interface is intended to be a complete wrapping of the HDF5 API, while the high-level component supports access to HDF5 files, datasets and groups using established Python and NumPy concepts.

A strong emphasis on automatic conversion between Python (Numpy) datatypes and data structures and their HDF5 equivalents vastly simplifies the process of reading and writing data from Python.

Wheels are provided for several popular platforms, with an included copy of the HDF5 library (usually the latest version when h5py is released).

You can also build h5py from source <https://docs.h5py.org/en/stable/build.html#source-installation>_ with any HDF5 stable release from version 1.10.4 onwards, although naturally new HDF5 versions released after this version of h5py may not work. Odd-numbered minor versions of HDF5 (e.g. 1.13) are experimental, and may not be supported.