PyVCF3 has been created because the Official PyVCF repository is no longer maintained and do not accept any pull requests. This fork is for python 3 only and has been published on pyPI as PyVCF3.
A VCFv4.0 and 4.1 parser for Python. Online version of PyVCF documentation is available at https://pyvcf.rtfd.org/
The intent of this module is to mimic the csv
module in the Python stdlib,
as opposed to more flexible serialization formats like JSON or YAML. vcf
will attempt to parse the content of each record based on the data types
specified in the meta-information lines -- specifically the ##INFO and
##FORMAT lines. If these lines are missing or incomplete, it will check
against the reserved types mentioned in the spec. Failing that, it will just
return strings.
There main interface is the class: Reader
. It takes a file-like
object and acts as a reader:
>>> import vcf >>> vcf_reader = vcf.Reader(open('vcf/test/example-4.0.vcf', 'r')) >>> for record in vcf_reader: ... print record Record(CHROM=20, POS=14370, REF=G, ALT=[A]) Record(CHROM=20, POS=17330, REF=T, ALT=[A]) Record(CHROM=20, POS=1110696, REF=A, ALT=[G, T]) Record(CHROM=20, POS=1230237, REF=T, ALT=[None]) Record(CHROM=20, POS=1234567, REF=GTCT, ALT=[G, GTACT])
This produces a great deal of information, but it is conveniently accessed. The attributes of a Record are the 8 fixed fields from the VCF spec:
* ``Record.CHROM`` * ``Record.POS`` * ``Record.ID`` * ``Record.REF`` * ``Record.ALT`` * ``Record.QUAL`` * ``Record.FILTER`` * ``Record.INFO``
plus attributes to handle genotype information:
Record.FORMAT
Record.samples
Record.genotype
samples
and genotype
, not being the title of any column, are left lowercase. The format
of the fixed fields is from the spec. Comma-separated lists in the VCF are
converted to lists. In particular, one-entry VCF lists are converted to
one-entry Python lists (see, e.g., Record.ALT
). Semicolon-delimited lists
of key=value pairs are converted to Python dictionaries, with flags being given
a True
value. Integers and floats are handled exactly as you'd expect:
>>> vcf_reader = vcf.Reader(open('vcf/test/example-4.0.vcf', 'r')) >>> record = next(vcf_reader) >>> print record.POS 14370 >>> print record.ALT [A] >>> print record.INFO['AF'] [0.5]
There are a number of convenience methods and properties for each Record
allowing you to
examine properties of interest:
>>> print record.num_called, record.call_rate, record.num_unknown 3 1.0 0 >>> print record.num_hom_ref, record.num_het, record.num_hom_alt 1 1 1 >>> print record.nucl_diversity, record.aaf, record.heterozygosity 0.6 [0.5] 0.5 >>> print record.get_hets() [Call(sample=NA00002, CallData(GT=1|0, GQ=48, DP=8, HQ=[51, 51]))] >>> print record.is_snp, record.is_indel, record.is_transition, record.is_deletion True False True False >>> print record.var_type, record.var_subtype snp ts >>> print record.is_monomorphic False
record.FORMAT
will be a string specifying the format of the genotype
fields. In case the FORMAT column does not exist, record.FORMAT
is
None
. Finally, record.samples
is a list of dictionaries containing the
parsed sample column and record.genotype
is a way of looking up genotypes
by sample name:
>>> record = next(vcf_reader) >>> for sample in record.samples: ... print sample['GT'] 0|0 0|1 0/0 >>> print record.genotype('NA00001')['GT'] 0|0
The genotypes are represented by Call
objects, which have three attributes: the
corresponding Record site
, the sample name in sample
and a dictionary of
call data in data
:
>>> call = record.genotype('NA00001') >>> print call.site Record(CHROM=20, POS=17330, REF=T, ALT=[A]) >>> print call.sample NA00001 >>> print call.data CallData(GT=0|0, GQ=49, DP=3, HQ=[58, 50])
Please note that as of release 0.4.0, attributes known to have single values (such as
DP
and GQ
above) are returned as values. Other attributes are returned
as lists (such as HQ
above).
There are also a number of methods:
>>> print call.called, call.gt_type, call.gt_bases, call.phased True 0 T|T True
Metadata regarding the VCF file itself can be investigated through the following attributes:
Reader.metadata
Reader.infos
Reader.filters
Reader.formats
Reader.samples
For example:
>>> vcf_reader.metadata['fileDate'] '20090805' >>> vcf_reader.samples ['NA00001', 'NA00002', 'NA00003'] >>> vcf_reader.filters OrderedDict([('q10', Filter(id='q10', desc='Quality below 10')), ('s50', Filter(id='s50', desc='Less than 50% of samples have data'))]) >>> vcf_reader.infos['AA'].desc 'Ancestral Allele'
ALT records are actually classes, so that you can interrogate them:
>>> reader = vcf.Reader(open('vcf/test/example-4.1-bnd.vcf')) >>> _ = next(reader); row = next(reader) >>> print row Record(CHROM=1, POS=2, REF=T, ALT=[T[2:3[]) >>> bnd = row.ALT[0] >>> print bnd.withinMainAssembly, bnd.orientation, bnd.remoteOrientation, bnd.connectingSequence True False True T
The Reader supports retrieval of records within designated regions for files with tabix indexes via the fetch method. This requires the pysam module as a dependency. Pass in a chromosome, and, optionally, start and end coordinates, for the regions of interest:
>>> vcf_reader = vcf.Reader(filename='vcf/test/tb.vcf.gz') >>> # fetch all records on chromosome 20 from base 1110696 through 1230237 >>> for record in vcf_reader.fetch('20', 1110695, 1230237): # doctest: +SKIP ... print record Record(CHROM=20, POS=1110696, REF=A, ALT=[G, T]) Record(CHROM=20, POS=1230237, REF=T, ALT=[None])
Note that the start and end coordinates are in the zero-based, half-open
coordinate system, similar to _Record.start
and _Record.end
. The very
first base of a chromosome is index 0, and the the region includes bases up
to, but not including the base at the end coordinate. For example:
>>> # fetch all records on chromosome 4 from base 11 through 20 >>> vcf_reader.fetch('4', 10, 20) # doctest: +SKIP
would include all records overlapping a 10 base pair region from the 11th base of through the 20th base (which is at index 19) of chromosome 4. It would not include the 21st base (at index 20). (See https://genomewiki.ucsc.edu/index.php/Coordinate_Transforms for more information on the zero-based, half-open coordinate system.)
The Writer
class provides a way of writing a VCF file. Currently, you must specify a
template Reader
which provides the metadata:
>>> vcf_reader = vcf.Reader(filename='vcf/test/tb.vcf.gz') >>> vcf_writer = vcf.Writer(open('/dev/null', 'w'), vcf_reader) >>> for record in vcf_reader: ... vcf_writer.write_record(record)
An extensible script is available to filter vcf files in vcf_filter.py. VCF filters declared by other packages will be available for use in this script. Please see :doc:`FILTERS` for full description.