A toolkit for working with OWL ontologies in javascript that leverages the java OWLAPI.
Or try some scripts:
Remove annotation assertions from an ontology:
owljs-grep 'function(ax){ return ax.isLogicalAxiom() }' foo.owl > fooLogical.owl
Run a DL query:
owljs-dlquery -r elk "'part_of' some 'cell'" foo.owl
Query based on templated pattern matching:
owljs-dlmatch 'q.subClassOfMatch("?x","?y")' foo.owl
Start a REPL:
owljs-repl -i bootcl.js cl-edit.owl
>> x = someValuesFrom(o.part_of, o.cell)
>> cell_parts = owl.getInferredSubClasses(x)
>> cell_parts.forEach(pp) // print all cell parts
owljs requires RingoJS, a CommonJS-based JavaScript runtime written in Java and based on the Mozilla Rhino JavaScript engine.
owljs also requires an OWLAPI jar. This repository has the owltools jar bundled (which includes the owlapi as part).
Download and install ringojs from http://ringojs.org/ (or using your favorite package manager)
Install using ringo-admin:
ringo-admin install cmungall/owljs
Set your path to include the owljs executables:
export PATH="$PATH:/usr/share/ringojs/packages/owl/bin/
(the exact path may vary, depending on your ringo installation)
Alternatively, you can skip the install step and point directly to your checked out version:
export RINGO_MODULE_PATH="$HOME/repos/"
(Assuming you git cloned owljs into ~/repos/)
You can use the pre-packaged scripts without any knowledge of the API. For more interactive hacking, you can use the REPL. Custom scripts can be built using the the owljs API
All scripts are in the bin directory.
See the bin/README for more details
Hacking can be either interactive (in the REPL) or can involve writing your own scripts.
Either requires some knowledge of the owljs API, and many some cases, knowledge of the java OWLAPI.
Currenly the main use for this module is REPL-based OWL hacking. If you don't know what this is, then it's probably not for you, at least not yet.
To start a REPL session:
owljs-repl [OWLFILE]
You can type any javascript commands, e.g.
print(1+2)
Assuming your ontology has the relevant classes, you can add an axiom:
add(subClassOf(o.epithelium, o.portion_of_tissue))
(note that autocomplete is enabled)
See README-REPL.md for more examples
See the bin/ directory for examples of scripts.
To run tests:
make test
See the test/ directory for individual tests.
owljs is currently neutral w.r.t. domain - biology, pizzas, ...
It can be combined with complementary domain-specific APIs (either js APIs, java APIs, or REST APIs). In particular, I anticipate adding scripts that leverage two other js APIs: bbop-js and monarch-api. bbop-js runs under any js engine, and monarch-api is developed in ringo.
TODO
owljs makes JVM calls to the OWLAPI, so it would be difficult to port this to a non-JVM js engine such as Node. The system is designed to be one component in an ecosystem, and may one day include a RESTful server using JSON-LD, allowing any kinds of client access to OWL capabilities. The same API may be preserved, allowing a node.js client to make RESTful calls to a jvm owljs server as if it were talking to the JVM.
See the scripts in the bin directory
Yet Another owl diffing tool. The goal for this tool is to be maximally configurable to allow plugging in custom js functions, as diff requirements differ!
Basic usage is:
owljs-diff ONT1.owl ONT2.owl > diff.md
OBO format can be used as well.
Output format is currently only markdown (although in principle it should be easy to write custom renderers). Markdown has a number of advantages - it is reasonably human readable, and is a standard markup format in many platforms.
For examples of markdown output, see the release notes on http://uberon.org - generated using a combination of owljs-diff and the Jekyll platform.
The core library is lib/Differ.js
This tool parses labels and synonyms, matches sub-strings and checks these against standard patterns to be able to generate equivalence axioms.
It is being used to retrospectively axiomatize various ontologies that were not designed in OWL from the ground-up.
The java OWLAPI is the library of choice for serious heavyweight ontology lifting. However, java can be unwiedly and doesn't lend itself well to small ad-hoc tasks, command line scripting or shell programming.
There are a number of excellent efforts that leverage the OWLAPI from other JVM libraries including:
- Groovy
- Scala (https://github.com/phenoscape/scowl)
- Clojure (Tawny-OWL)
- Armed Bear Common Lisp (LSW)
In addition, there are non-JVM libs that implement some or many of the features of the OWLAPI (OntoPerl, Thea/prolog).
I created a JS library because JS is already widely used in our group (both on the client and the server), and easy integration with libraries such as bbop.js are a big win.
It's not a perfect solution. Ringo has less of an ecosystem than node. And the Rhino engine (which Ringo is built on) has IMHO quite an awkward bridge between js and java, particularly when it comes to working with arrays or sets (owljs has some convenience methods for wrapping these two). This may be less of an issue in future if we move towards some kind of standard REST access to the OWLAPI.
On balance, after having experimented with other options, the js+java combination works well for our group. YMMV.