add docs for editing NWB files

[bendichter]

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[codecov]

Codecov Report

All modified and coverable lines are covered by tests ✅

Comparison is base (c40df49) 91.99% compared to head (31fb465) 91.99%.

Additional details and impacted files

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  Coverage   91.99%   91.99%           
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  Files          27       27           
  Lines        2623     2623           
  Branches      685      685           
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  Hits         2413     2413           
  Misses        138      138           
  Partials       72       72           

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integration	71.10% <ø> (ø)
unit	83.68% <ø> (ø)

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[oruebel]

@mavaylon1 is also working on a tutorial for this

[bendichter]

Where is it?

[bendichter]

Thanks for the review, @oruebel. I've made a bunch of these changes. I haven't yet included export, since I don't know its functionality as well, but that's the next step.

[bendichter]

@oruebel ok, this is ready for another round of review

[oruebel]

ok, this is ready for another round of review

Overall this looks good to me. I added a few suggestions for minor edits on text, but nothing critical. Feel free to accept/reject the suggestions as necessary.

@rly do you know whether it is possible to change the values of attributes directly in PyNWB. I vaguely remember that PyNWB/HDMF was tracking changes to attribute values so that one can set the values and then call write again on the file to update those values. But I'm not 100% sure whether this is working or if that was just something that we were discussing as a potential feature at some point.

[rly]

@rly do you know whether it is possible to change the values of attributes directly in PyNWB. I vaguely remember that PyNWB/HDMF was tracking changes to attribute values so that one can set the values and then call write again on the file to update those values. But I'm not 100% sure whether this is working or if that was just something that we were discussing as a potential feature at some point.

This is not allowed because AbstractContainer prevents all fields from being changed after they are set. We were discussing removing that restriction and replacing it with warnings in hdmf-dev/hdmf#868 but that work is not complete. I ran a few tests here a few months ago to confirm: https://gist.github.com/rly/be7bee420b482b9ddcd084f57cc4115e

[oruebel]

This is not allowed

Thanks for the clarification. In that case, I think this is good to go.

[oruebel]

Thanks @bendichter ! One thing I missed, we should also make a thumbnail for this tutorial. The PowerPoint file with all the Thumbnail sources is in the repo here https://github.com/NeurodataWithoutBorders/pynwb/blob/dev/docs/source/figures/gallery_thumbnails.pptx