What happened?

get_data_shape is used in many places, including shape validation and getting dimension labels. In NWB, an Image neurodata type is a descendent of Data, i.e., a dataset. ImageReferences has a field that stores a 1-D list/array of Image objects. However, when validating the shape of input to that field in ImageReferences, get_data_shape recurses into the Image data to get the shape of the images. As a result, a 1-D list of references to Image objects, which on disk has shape (N, ), will be reported by get_data_shape as having shape (N, W, H). where (W, H) is the shape of the first image. The schema says the field should have shape (N, ).

Secondly, writing valid ImageReferences produces a warning on write:
/Users/rly/Documents/NWB/hdmf/src/hdmf/build/objectmapper.py:874: IncorrectDatasetShapeBuildWarning: Shape of data does not match shape in spec 'ImageReferences'
warnings.warn(msg, IncorrectDatasetShapeBuildWarning)

This occurs when getting dimension labels.

get_data_shape on a list/array of Data objects (a dataset of references) should return the shape of the list/array and not recurse deeper.

Steps to Reproduce

get_data_shape([Data(name="a", data=[1, 2]), Data(name="b", data=[3, 4])])

Traceback

Operating System

macOS

Python Version

3.13

Package Versions

No response