MAINT: move doc file from f-merge-entities here

src/doc/high_level_api.org

+* High Level API
+
+In addition to the old standard pylib API, new versions of pylib ship with a high level API
+that facilitates usage of CaosDB entities within data analysis scripts. In a nutshell that
+API exposes all properties of CaosDB Records as standard python attributes making their
+access easier.
+
+Or to spell it out directly in Python:
+#+BEGIN_SRC python
+
+  import caosdb as db
+  # Old API:
+  r = db.Record()
+  r.add_parent("Experiment")
+  r.add_property(name="alpha", value=5)
+  r.get_property("alpha").value = 25 # setting properties (old api)
+  print(r.get_property("alpha").value + 25) # getting properties (old api)
+
+  from caosdb.high_level_api import convert_to_python_entity
+  obj = convert_to_python_object(r) # create a high level entity
+  obj.r = 25 # setting properties (new api)
+  print(obj.r + 25) # getting properties (new api)
+
+#+END_SRC
+
+
+** Quickstart
+
+The module, needed for the high level API is called:
+~caosdb.high_level_api~
+
+There are two functions converting entities between the two representation (old API and new API):
+- ~convert_to_python_object~: Convert entities from **old** into **new** representation.
+- ~convert_to_entity~: Convert entities from **new** into **old** representation.
+
+Furthermore there are a few utility functions which expose very practical shorthands:
+- ~new_high_level_entity~: Retrieve a record type and create a new high level entity which contains properties of a certain importance level preset.
+- ~create_record~: Create a new high level entity using the name of a record type and a list of key value pairs as properties.
+- ~load_external_record~: Retrieve a record with a specific name and return it as high level entity.
+- ~create_entity_container~: Convert a high level entity into a standard entity including all sub entities.
+- ~query~: Do a CaosDB query and return the result as a container of high level objects.
+
+So as a first example, you could retrieve any record from CaosDB and use it using its high level representation:
+#+BEGIN_SRC python
+  from caosdb.high_level_api import query
+
+  res = query("FIND Record Experiment")
+  experiment = res[0]
+  # Use a property:
+  print(experiment.date)
+
+  # Use sub properties:
+  print(experiment.output[0].path)
+#+END_SRC
+
+The latter example demonstrates, that the function query is very powerful. For its default parameter
+values it automatically resolves and retrieves references recursively, so that sub properties,
+like the list of output files "output", become immediately available.
+
+**Note** that for the old API you were supposed to run the following series of commands
+to achieve the same result:
+#+BEGIN_SRC python
+  import caosdb as db
+
+  res = db.execute_query("FIND Record Experiment")
+  output = res.get_property("output")
+  output_file = db.File(id=output.value[0].id).retrieve()
+  print(output_file.path)
+#+END_SRC
+
+Resolving subproperties makes use of the "resolve_reference" function provided by the high level
+entity class (~CaosDBPythonEntity~), with the following parameters:
+- ~deep~: Whether to use recursive retrieval
+- ~references~: Whether to use the supplied db.Container to resolve references. This allows offline usage. Set it to None if you want to automatically retrieve entities from the current CaosDB connection.
+- ~visited~: Needed for recursion, set this to None.
+
+Objects in the high level representation can be serialized to a simple yaml form using the function
+~serialize~ with the following parameters:
+- ~without_metadata~: Set this to True if you don't want to see property metadata like "unit" or "importance".
+- ~visited~: Needed for recursion, set this to None.
+
+This function creates a simple dictionary containing a representation of the entity, which can be
+stored to disk and completely deserialized using the function ~deserialize~.
+
+Furthermore the "__str__" function is overloaded, so that you can use print to directly inspect
+high level objects using the following statement:
+#+BEGIN_SRC python
+print(str(obj))
+#+END_SRC
+
+
+** Concepts
+
+As described in the section [[Quickstart]] the two functions ~convert_to_python_object~ and ~convert_to_entity~ convert
+entities beetween the high level and the standard representation.
+
+The high level entities are represented using the following classes from the module ~caosdb.high_level_api~:
+- ~CaosDBPythonEntity~: Base class of the following entity classes.
+- ~CaosDBPythonRecord~
+- ~CaosDBPythonRecordType~
+- ~CaosDBPythonProperty~
+- ~CaosDBPythonMultiProperty~: **WARNING** Not implemented yet.
+- ~CaosDBPythonFile~: Used for file entities and provides an additional ~download~ function for being able to directly retrieve files from CaosDB.
+
+In addition, there are the following helper structures which are realized as Python data classes:
+- ~CaosDBPropertyMetaData~: For storing meta data about properties.
+- ~CaosDBPythonUnresolved~: The base class of unresolved "things".
+- ~CaosDBPythonUnresolvedParent~: Parents of entities are stored as unresolved parents by default, storing an id or a name of a parent (or both).
+- ~CaosDBPythonUnresolvedReference~: An unresolved reference is a reference property with an id which has not (yet) been resolved to an Entity.
+
+The function "resolve_references" can be used to recursively replace ~CaosDBPythonUnresolvedReferences~ into members of type ~CaosDBPythonRecords~
+or ~CaosDBPythonFile~.
+
+Each property stored in a CaosDB record corresponds to:
+- a member attribute of ~CaosDBPythonRecord~ **and**
+- an entry in a dict called "metadata" storing a CaosDBPropertyMetadata object with the following information about proeprties:
+  - ~unit~
+  - ~datatype~
+  - ~description~
+  - ~id~
+  - ~importance~