# Access to data read by legacyVTKreader in Paraview

**URL:** https://discourse.paraview.org/t/access-to-data-read-by-legacyvtkreader-in-paraview/4125
**Category:** ParaView Support
**Tags:** python
**Created:** [April 20, 2020, 6:14pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/access-to-data-read-by-legacyvtkreader-in-paraview/4125 "2020-04-20T18:14:20Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![leoncwu](https://discourse.paraview.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/l/f17d59/32.png) [@leoncwu](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/leoncwu)
#### Post date: [April 20, 2020, 6:14pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/access-to-data-read-by-legacyvtkreader-in-paraview/4125/1 "2020-04-20T18:14:20Z")

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In the Paraview Information panel as shown in the screenshot below:

 ![Screen Shot 2020-04-20 at 2.08.30 PM](https://discourse.paraview.org/uploads/default/original/2X/f/f390aa60df75e4e7b37470946ef3b36630217ced.png)

I can see the general information and data for the given data set. I hope to explore and print the values (coordinates/scalar/vector variable values) of an element with a specific element ID or maybe index in the python script. Is there any method I can use to gain access to the data in python script for the data set read by a legacyVTKreader?

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### Author: ![bastian](https://discourse.paraview.org/user_avatar/discourse.paraview.org/bastian/32/7513_2.png) [@bastian](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/bastian)
#### Post date: [April 20, 2020, 8:13pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/access-to-data-read-by-legacyvtkreader-in-paraview/4125/2 "2020-04-20T20:13:22Z")

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If all you need is the data stored in the VTK file and none of Paraview’s visualization capabilities why don’t you just load the VTK file right in python with one of the python packages designed for this purpose?  
(e.g. [https://github.com/nschloe/meshio](https://github.com/nschloe/meshio))

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### Author: ![mwestphal](https://discourse.paraview.org/user_avatar/discourse.paraview.org/mwestphal/32/17_2.png) [@mwestphal](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/mwestphal)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2020, 2:31am UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/access-to-data-read-by-legacyvtkreader-in-paraview/4125/3 "2020-04-21T02:31:35Z")

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servermanager.Fetch should do the trick.  
[https://kitware.github.io/paraview-docs/latest/python/paraview.servermanager.html#paraview.servermanager.Fetch](https://kitware.github.io/paraview-docs/latest/python/paraview.servermanager.html#paraview.servermanager.Fetch)

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### Author: ![leoncwu](https://discourse.paraview.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/l/f17d59/32.png) [@leoncwu](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/leoncwu)
#### Post date: [April 27, 2020, 3:06pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/access-to-data-read-by-legacyvtkreader-in-paraview/4125/4 "2020-04-27T15:06:03Z")

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Thank you so much for your help. This address my issue.