Owlready

Owlready (previously named Ontopy) is a module for ontology-oriented programming in Python 3.

Note: Owlready is deprecated in favor to the new version, Owlready2: http://bitbucket.org/jibalamy/owlready2 .

Owlready can:

• Import and export OWL 2.0 ontologies in the OWL/XML format (other file formats are not yet supported).
• Manipulates ontology classes, instances and properties transparently, as if they were normal Python objects.
• Add Python methods to ontology classes.
• Perform automatic classification of classes and instances, using the HermiT reasoner.
• Automatically generate dialog boxes for editing ontology instances, using Editobj3.

Owlready has been created by Jean-Baptiste Lamy at the LIMICS reseach lab. It is available under the GNU LGPL licence v3. In case of trouble, please contact Jean-Baptiste Lamy <jean-baptiste.lamy @ univ-paris13 . fr>

LIMICS
University Paris 13, Sorbonne Paris Cité
Bureau 149
74 rue Marcel Cachin
93017 BOBIGNY
FRANCE

What can I do with Owlready?

Load an ontology from a local repository, or from Internet:

>>> from owlready import *
>>> onto_path.append("/path/to/your/local/ontology/repository")
>>> onto = get_ontology("http://www.lesfleursdunormal.fr/static/_downloads/pizza_onto.owl")
>>> onto.load()

Create new classes in the ontology, possibly mixing OWL restrictions and Python methods:

>>> class NonVegetarianPizza(onto.Pizza):
...   equivalent_to = [
...     onto.Pizza
...   & ( restriction("has_topping", SOME, onto.MeatTopping)
...     | restriction("has_topping", SOME, onto.FishTopping)
...     ) ]
...   def eat(self): print("Beurk! I'm vegetarian!")

Access ontology class, and create new instances / individuals:

>>> onto.Pizza
pizza_onto.Pizza
>>> test_pizza = onto.Pizza("test_pizza_owl_identifier")
>>> test_pizza.has_topping = [ onto.CheeseTopping(),
...                            onto.TomatoTopping(),
...                            onto.MeatTopping  () ]

Export to OWL/XML file:

>>> test_onto.save()

Perform reasoning, and classify instances and classes:

>>> test_pizza.__class__
onto.Pizza

>>> # Execute HermiT and reparent instances and classes
>>> onto.sync_reasoner()

>>> test_pizza.__class__
onto.NonVegetarianPizza
>>> test_pizza.eat()
Beurk! I'm vegetarian !

For more documentation, look at the doc/ and doc/examples/ directories in the source.

Changelog

0.2

• Fix sync_reasonner and Hermit call under windows (thanks Clare Grasso)

0.3

• Add warnings
• Accepts ontologies files that do not ends with '.owl'
• Fix a bug when loading ontologies including concept without a '#' in their IRI

Links

Owlready on BitBucket (development repository): https://bitbucket.org/jibalamy/owlready

Owlready on PyPI (Python Package Index, stable release): https://pypi.python.org/pypi/Owlready

Documentation: http://pythonhosted.org/Owlready

Mail me for any comment, problem, suggestion or help !

Jiba -- Jean-Baptiste LAMY -- jibalamy @ free.fr