unload_namespace

[bendichter]

2) Feature Request

Right now it is difficult to test the load_namespaces flag in NWBHDF5IO for reading a custom extension. If you create an extension and an API either from get_class or from manually writing a class, this requires you to call load_namespace. Then if you try to use the load_namespaces flag in NWBHDF5IO that namespace will be skipped since it has already been loaded. I propose a new function, unload_namespace, which will remove a namespace from the type map, allowing you to test the read through load_namespaces.

Checklist

• Have you ensured the feature or change was not already reported ?
• Have you included a brief and descriptive title?
• Have you included a clear description of the problem you are trying to solve?
• Have you included a minimal code snippet that reproduces the issue you are encountering?
• Have you checked our Contributing document?

[t-b]

This sounds a bit like a work around for the globals in

pynwb/src/pynwb/__init__.py

Lines 36 to 42 in 92a0463

	# a global namespace catalog
	global __NS_CATALOG
	global __TYPE_MAP
	__NS_CATALOG = NamespaceCatalog(NWBGroupSpec, NWBDatasetSpec, NWBNamespace)

or? Why do we need the globals anyway?