[Feature]: Save info about the conversion in the NWB files

[oruebel]

What would you like to see added to the NWB GUIDE?

Problem
It would be useful to be able to:

1. identify if a file was generated with GUIDE. This is useful for usage metrics (e.g., to count the number of files on DANDI that use GUIDE) as well as for degbugging
2. provide information about the conversion process

Proposed Solution:

• NWB has the field /general/source_script that we could be used to store metadata about the conversion. For the minimal solution, this can be very simple. Maybe a YAML or JSON document with name of the software (i.e. "NWB GUIDE") and version of GUIDE used. We could then build on this approach, to include more information, e.g., to include the full YAML configuration for the conversion that GUIDE used.
• Alternatively (or in addition to) we you could append a standard string to the /general/notes text, e.g., This file was generated using NWB GUIDE 1.0
• It would also be useful to do follow the same approach in NeuroConv (or maybe implement it there)

Do you have any interest in helping implement the feature?

Yes.

Code of Conduct

Yes

Did you confirm this feature was not already reported?

Yes

[rly]

• NWB has the field /general/source_script that we could be used to store metadata about the conversion. For the minimal solution, this can be very simple. Maybe a YAML or JSON document with name of the software (i.e. "NWB GUIDE") and version of GUIDE used. We could then build on this approach, to include more information, e.g., to include the full YAML configuration for the conversion that GUIDE used.

The minimal solution is already implemented. Adding information about the conversion process would be nice though.

[oruebel]

The minimal solution is already implemented.

Great! Does NeuroConv also do this?

Adding information about the conversion process would be nice though.

That can probably done when support for exporting to YAML is possible, because then NeuroConv could just add the YAML script in.

[rly]

Great! Does NeuroConv also do this?

Yes. https://github.com/catalystneuro/neuroconv/blob/60c5e2a9a1736c237ce46f1545abbe0a318070e6/src/neuroconv/basedatainterface.py#L80