libSBML Python API
5.18.0
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This class of objects is defined by libSBML only and has no direct equivalent in terms of SBML components. This class is not prescribed by the SBML specifications, although it is used to implement features defined in SBML.
The SBML Level 2 and Level 3 specifications define a simple format for annotating models when (a) referring to controlled vocabulary terms and database identifiers that define and describe biological and biochemical entities, and (b) describing the creator of a model and the model's modification history. This SBML format is a concrete syntax that conforms to the guidelines of MIRIAM ('Minimum Information Requested in the Annotation of biochemical Models', Nature Biotechnology, vol. 23, no. 12, Dec. 2005). The format uses a subset of W3C RDF (Resource Description Format). In order to help application developers work with annotations in this format, libSBML provides several helper classes that provide higher-level interfaces to the data elements; these classes include CVTerm, ModelCreator, ModelHistory, RDFAnnotationParser, and Date.
The SBML annotation format consists of RDF-based content placed inside an <annotation>
element attached to an SBML component such as Species, Compartment, etc. A small change was introduced in SBML Level 2 Version 5 and SBML Level 3 Version 2 to permit nested annotations: lower Versions of the SBML specifications did not explicitly allow this. We first describe the different parts of SBML annotations in XML form for SBML Level 2 below Version 5 and SBML Level 3 below Version 2:
<SBML_ELEMENT +++ metaid="meta id" +++> +++ <annotation> +++ <rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf='http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#' xmlns:dcterm='http://purl.org/dc/terms/' xmlns:vcard='http://www.w3.org/2001/vcard-rdf/3.0#' xmlns:bqbiol='http://biomodels.net/biology-qualifiers/' xmlns:bqmodel='http://biomodels.net/model-qualifiers/' > <rdf:Description rdf:about="#meta id"> HISTORY <RELATION_ELEMENT> <rdf:Bag> <rdf:li rdf:resource="URI" /> ... </rdf:Bag> </RELATION_ELEMENT> ... </rdf:Description> +++ </rdf:RDF> +++ </annotation> +++ </SBML_ELEMENT>
In the template above, the placeholder SBML_ELEMENT stands for the XML tag name of an SBML model component (e.g., model
, reaction
, etc.) and the placeholder meta id stands for the element's meta identifier, which is a field available on all SBML components derived from the SBase base object class. The dotted portions are optional, the symbol +++ is a placeholder for either no content or valid XML content that is not defined by this annotation scheme, and the ellipses ... are placeholders for zero or more elements of the same form as the immediately preceding element. The optional content HISTORY is a creation and modification history; in libSBML, this is stored using ModelHistory objects.
The placeholder RELATION_ELEMENT refers to a BioModels.net qualifier element name. This is an element in either the XML namespace 'http://biomodels.net/model-qualifiers'
(for model qualifiers) or 'http://biomodels.net/biology-qualifiers'
(for biological qualifier). Note that these namespace URIs are only labels, and not actual Web locations, which means you cannot visit an address such as 'http://biomodels.net/model-qualifiers'
in your browser or try to have your application access it.
The URI is a required data value that uniquely identifies a resource and data within that resource to which the annotation refers. Again, being URIs, these do not refer to physical Web locations; nevertheless, applications will often want a means of finding the resource to which a given URI refers. Providing the facilities for this task is the purpose of MIRIAM Resources, described in detail online at http://biomodels.net/miriam) and also in the paper 'MIRIAM Resources: tools to generate and resolve robust cross-references in Systems Biology', BMC Systems Biology, 58(1), 2007.
Finally, the following is the same template as above, but this time showing the nested content permitted by the most recent SBML specifications (SBML Level 2 Version 5 and Level 3 Version 2):
<SBML_ELEMENT +++ metaid="meta id" +++> +++ <annotation> +++ <rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf='http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#' xmlns:dcterm='http://purl.org/dc/terms/' xmlns:vcard='http://www.w3.org/2001/vcard-rdf/3.0#' xmlns:bqbiol='http://biomodels.net/biology-qualifiers/' xmlns:bqmodel='http://biomodels.net/model-qualifiers/' > <rdf:Description rdf:about="#meta id"> HISTORY <RELATION_ELEMENT> <rdf:Bag> <rdf:li rdf:resource="URI" /> NESTED_CONTENT ... </rdf:Bag> </RELATION_ELEMENT> ... </rdf:Description> +++ </rdf:RDF> +++ </annotation> +++ </SBML_ELEMENT>
The placeholder NESTED_CONTENT refers to other optional RDF elements such as 'bqbiol:isDescribedBy'
that describe a clarification or another annotation about the RELATION_ELEMENT in which it appears. Nested content allows one to, for example, describe protein modifications on species, or to add evidence codes for an annotation. Nested content relates to its containing RELATION_ELEMENT, not the other way around. It qualifies it, but does not change its meaning. As such, ignoring a NESTED_CONTENT does not affect the information provided by the containing RELATION_ELEMENT.
For more information about SBML annotations in general, please refer to Section 6 in the SBML Level 2 (Versions 2–4) or Level 3 specification documents.
Annotations that refer to controlled vocabularies are managed in libSBML using CVTerm objects. The relation-resource pairs discussed in the previous section are the 'controlled vocabulary' terms that CVTerm is designed to store and manipulate. A set of RDF-based annotations attached to a given SBML <annotation>
element are read by RDFAnnotationParser and converted into a list of these CVTerm objects. Each CVTerm object instance stores the following components of an annotation:
The qualifier, which can be a BioModels.net 'biological qualifier', a BioModels.net 'model qualifier', or an unknown qualifier (as far as the CVTerm class is concerned). Qualifiers are used in MIRIAM to indicate the nature of the relationship between the object being annotated and the resource. In CVTerm, the qualifiers can be manipulated using the methods CVTerm.getQualifierType(), CVTerm.setQualifierType(), and related methods.
The resource, represented by a URI (which, we must remind developers, is not the same as a URL). In the CVTerm class, the resource component can be manipulated using the methods CVTerm.addResource() and CVTerm.removeResource().
Note that a CVTerm contains a single qualifier, but possibly more than one resource. This corresponds to the possibility of an annotation that points to multiple resources, all of which are qualified by the same BioModels.net qualifier. The CVTerm object class supports this by supporting a list of resources.
Detailed explanations of the qualifiers defined by BioModels.net can be found at http://co.mbine.org/standards/qualifiers.
Public Member Functions | |
def | __init__ (self, args) |
This method has multiple variants; they differ in the arguments they accept. More... | |
def | addNestedCVTerm (self, term) |
Adds a copy of the given CVTerm object to the list of nested CVTerm objects within this CVTerm object. More... | |
def | addResource (self, resource) |
Adds a resource reference to this CVTerm object. More... | |
def | clone (self) |
Creates and returns a deep copy of this CVTerm object. More... | |
def | getBiologicalQualifierType (self, args) |
Returns the biological qualifier type of this CVTerm object. More... | |
def | getListNestedCVTerms (self, args) |
Returns a list of CVTerm objects contained within this CVTerm object. More... | |
def | getModelQualifierType (self, args) |
Returns the model qualifier type of this CVTerm object. More... | |
def | getNestedCVTerm (self, args) |
Returns the nth CVTerm in the list of CVTerms of this CVTerm object. More... | |
def | getNumNestedCVTerms (self) |
Returns the number of CVTerm objects nested within this CVTerm object. More... | |
def | getNumResources (self, args) |
Returns the number of resources for this CVTerm object. More... | |
def | getQualifierType (self, args) |
Returns the qualifier type of this CVTerm object. More... | |
def | getResources (self, args) |
Returns the resource references for this CVTerm object. More... | |
def | getResourceURI (self, args) |
Returns the value of the nth resource for this CVTerm object. More... | |
def | hasRequiredAttributes (self, args) |
Predicate returning True if all the required elements for this CVTerm object have been set. More... | |
def | removeNestedCVTerm (self, n) |
Removes the nth CVTerm in the list of CVTerms of this CVTerm object and returns a pointer to it. More... | |
def | removeResource (self, resource) |
Removes a resource URI from the set of resources stored in this CVTerm object. More... | |
def | setBiologicalQualifierType (self, args) |
This method has multiple variants; they differ in the arguments they accept. More... | |
def | setModelQualifierType (self, args) |
This method has multiple variants; they differ in the arguments they accept. More... | |
def | setQualifierType (self, type) |
Sets the qualifier code of this CVTerm object. More... | |
def libsbml.CVTerm.__init__ | ( | self, | |
args | |||
) |
This method has multiple variants; they differ in the arguments they accept.
__init__(long type) CVTerm __init__() CVTerm __init__(XMLNode node) CVTerm __init__(CVTerm orig) CVTerm
Each variant is described separately below.
CVTerm(CVTerm orig)
Copy constructor; creates a copy of a CVTerm object.
orig | the CVTerm instance to copy. |
CVTerm(XMLNode node)
Creates a new CVTerm from the given XMLNode.
<annotation>
elements attached to individual SBML elements. The format for storing the content inside SBML <annotation>
elements is a subset of W3C RDF (Resource Description Format) expressed in XML. The CVTerm class provides a programming interface for working directly with controlled vocabulary term ('CV term') objects without having to deal directly with the XML form. When libSBML reads in an SBML model containing RDF annotations, it parses those annotations into a list of CVTerm objects, and when writing a model, it parses the CVTerm objects back into the appropriate SBML <annotation>
structure.This method creates a CVTerm object from the given XMLNode object node
. XMLNode is libSBML's representation of a node in an XML tree of elements, and each such element can be placed in a namespace. This constructor looks for the element to be in the XML namespaces 'http://biomodels.net/model-qualifiers'
(for model qualifiers) and 'http://biomodels.net/biology-qualifiers'
(for biological qualifier), and if they are, creates CVTerm objects for the result.
node | an XMLNode representing a CVTerm. |
node
is of the correct structural form.CVTerm(long type = UNKNOWN_QUALIFIER)
Creates an empty CVTerm, optionally with the given qualifier type
.
<annotation>
elements attached to individual SBML elements. The format for storing the content inside SBML <annotation>
elements is a subset of W3C RDF (Resource Description Format) expressed in XML. The CVTerm class provides a programming interface for working directly with controlled vocabulary term ('CV term') objects without having to deal directly with the XML form. When libSBML reads in an SBML model containing RDF annotations, it parses those annotations into a list of CVTerm objects, and when writing a model, it parses the CVTerm objects back into the appropriate SBML <annotation>
structure.This method creates an empty CVTerm object. The possible qualifier types usable as values of type
are MODEL_QUALIFIER and BIOLOGICAL_QUALIFIER. If an explicit value for type
is not given, this method defaults to using UNKNOWN_QUALIFIER. The qualifier type can be set later using the CVTerm.setQualifierType() method.
Different BioModels.net qualifier elements encode different types of relationships. Please refer to the SBML specification or the BioModels.net qualifiers web page for an explanation of the meaning of these different qualifiers.
type | a qualifier type. |
parameter
= value
. This is not to be intepreted as a Python keyword argument; the use of a parameter name followed by an equals sign followed by a value is only meant to indicate a default value if the argument is not provided at all. It is not a keyword in the Python sense. def libsbml.CVTerm.addNestedCVTerm | ( | self, | |
term | |||
) |
def libsbml.CVTerm.addResource | ( | self, | |
resource | |||
) |
Adds a resource reference to this CVTerm object.
addResource(string resource) int
<annotation>
elements attached to individual SBML elements. The format for storing the content inside SBML <annotation>
elements is a subset of W3C RDF (Resource Description Format) expressed in XML. The CVTerm class provides a programming interface for working directly with controlled vocabulary term ('CV term') objects without having to deal directly with the XML form. When libSBML reads in an SBML model containing RDF annotations, it parses those annotations into a list of CVTerm objects, and when writing a model, it parses the CVTerm objects back into the appropriate SBML <annotation>
structure.The specific RDF element used in this SBML format for referring to external entities is <rdf:Description>
, with a <rdf:Bag>
element containing one or more <rdf:li>
elements. Each such element refers to a data item in an external resource; the resource and data item are together identified uniquely using a URI. The following template illustrates the structure:
<rdf:Description rdf:about="#meta id"> HISTORY <RELATION_ELEMENT> <rdf:Bag> <rdf:li rdf:resource="resource URI" /> ... </rdf:Bag> </RELATION_ELEMENT> ... </rdf:Description>
In the template above, the placeholder meta id stands for the element's meta identifier, which is a field available on all SBML components derived from the SBase base object class. The dotted portions are optional, and the ellipses ... are placeholders for zero or more elements of the same form as the immediately preceding element. The placeholder RELATION_ELEMENT refers to a BioModels.net qualifier element name. This is an element in either the XML namespace 'http://biomodels.net/model-qualifiers'
(for model qualifiers) or 'http://biomodels.net/biology-qualifiers'
(for biological qualifier).
The resource URI is a required data value that uniquely identifies a resource and data within that resource to which the annotation refers. The present method allows callers to add a reference to a resource URI with the same relationship to the enclosing SBML object. (In other words, the argument to this method is a resource URI as shown in the XML fragment above.) Resources are stored in this CVTerm object within an XMLAttributes object.
The relationship of this CVTerm to the enclosing SBML object can be determined using the CVTerm methods such as CVTerm.getModelQualifierType() and CVTerm.getBiologicalQualifierType().
resource | a string representing the URI of the resource and data item being referenced; e.g., 'http://www.geneontology.org/#GO:0005892' . |
def libsbml.CVTerm.clone | ( | self | ) |
def libsbml.CVTerm.getBiologicalQualifierType | ( | self, | |
args | |||
) |
Returns the biological qualifier type of this CVTerm object.
getBiologicalQualifierType() long
<rdf:Description>
, with a <rdf:Bag>
element inside of it containing one or more <rdf:li>
elements. The following template illustrates the structure: <rdf:Description rdf:about="#meta id"> HISTORY <RELATION_ELEMENT> <rdf:Bag> <rdf:li rdf:resource="resource URI" /> ... </rdf:Bag> </RELATION_ELEMENT> ... </rdf:Description>In the template above, the placeholder meta id stands for the element's meta identifier, which is a field available on all SBML components derived from the SBase base object class. The dotted portions are optional, and the ellipses ... are placeholders for zero or more elements of the same form as the immediately preceding element.
The placeholder RELATION_ELEMENT refers to a BioModels.net qualifier element name. This is an element in either the XML namespace 'http://biomodels.net/model-qualifiers'
(for model qualifiers) or 'http://biomodels.net/biology-qualifiers'
(for biological qualifier). Callers will typically use CVTerm.getQualifierType() to find out the type of qualifier relevant to this particular CVTerm object, then if it is a biological qualifier, use the present method to determine the specific qualifier.
Annotations with biological qualifiers express a relationship between an annotation resource and the biological concept represented by a given object in the model. The diagram below illustrates the relationship in this case:
The set of known biological qualifiers is, at the time of this libSBML release, the following:
Any other BioModels.net qualifier found in the model is considered unknown by libSBML and reported as BQB_UNKNOWN.
def libsbml.CVTerm.getListNestedCVTerms | ( | self, | |
args | |||
) |
def libsbml.CVTerm.getModelQualifierType | ( | self, | |
args | |||
) |
Returns the model qualifier type of this CVTerm object.
getModelQualifierType() long
<rdf:Description>
, with a <rdf:Bag>
element inside of it containing one or more <rdf:li>
elements. The following template illustrates the structure: <rdf:Description rdf:about="#meta id"> HISTORY <RELATION_ELEMENT> <rdf:Bag> <rdf:li rdf:resource="resource URI" /> ... </rdf:Bag> </RELATION_ELEMENT> ... </rdf:Description>In the template above, the placeholder meta id stands for the element's meta identifier, which is a field available on all SBML components derived from the SBase base object class. The dotted portions are optional, and the ellipses ... are placeholders for zero or more elements of the same form as the immediately preceding element.
The placeholder RELATION_ELEMENT refers to a BioModels.net qualifier element name. This is an element in either the XML namespace 'http://biomodels.net/model-qualifiers'
(for model qualifiers) or 'http://biomodels.net/biology-qualifiers'
(for biological qualifier). Callers will typically use CVTerm.getQualifierType() to find out the type of qualifier relevant to this particular CVTerm object, then if it is a model qualifier, use the present method to determine the specific qualifier.
Annotations with model qualifiers express a relationship between an annotation resource and the modeling concept represented by a given object in the model. The diagram below illustrates the relationship in this case:
The set of known model qualifiers is, at the time of this libSBML release, the following:
Any other BioModels.net qualifier found in the model is considered unknown by libSBML and reported as BQM_UNKNOWN.
def libsbml.CVTerm.getNestedCVTerm | ( | self, | |
args | |||
) |
def libsbml.CVTerm.getNumNestedCVTerms | ( | self | ) |
def libsbml.CVTerm.getNumResources | ( | self, | |
args | |||
) |
Returns the number of resources for this CVTerm object.
getNumResources() long
<rdf:Description>
, with a <rdf:Bag>
element inside of it containing one or more <rdf:li>
elements. The following template illustrates the structure: <rdf:Description rdf:about="#meta id"> HISTORY <RELATION_ELEMENT> <rdf:Bag> <rdf:li rdf:resource="resource URI" /> ... </rdf:Bag> </RELATION_ELEMENT> ... </rdf:Description>In the template above, the placeholder meta id stands for the element's meta identifier, which is a field available on all SBML components derived from the SBase base object class. The dotted portions are optional, and the ellipses ... are placeholders for zero or more elements of the same form as the immediately preceding element.
The fragment above illustrates that there can be more than one resource referenced by a given relationship annotation (i.e., the resource URI values associated with a particular RELATION_ELEMENT). The present method returns a count of the resources stored in this CVTerm object.
def libsbml.CVTerm.getQualifierType | ( | self, | |
args | |||
) |
Returns the qualifier type of this CVTerm object.
getQualifierType() long
<rdf:Description>
, with a <rdf:Bag>
element inside of it containing one or more <rdf:li>
elements. The following template illustrates the structure: <rdf:Description rdf:about="#meta id"> HISTORY <RELATION_ELEMENT> <rdf:Bag> <rdf:li rdf:resource="resource URI" /> ... </rdf:Bag> </RELATION_ELEMENT> ... </rdf:Description>In the template above, the placeholder meta id stands for the element's meta identifier, which is a field available on all SBML components derived from the SBase base object class. The dotted portions are optional, and the ellipses ... are placeholders for zero or more elements of the same form as the immediately preceding element.
The placeholder RELATION_ELEMENT refers to a BioModels.net qualifier element name. This is an element in either the XML namespace 'http://biomodels.net/model-qualifiers'
(for model qualifiers) or 'http://biomodels.net/biology-qualifiers'
(for biological qualifier). The present method returns a code identifying which one of these two relationship namespaces is being used; any other qualifier in libSBML is considered unknown (as far as the CVTerm class is concerned). Consequently, this method will return one of the following values:
The specific relationship of this CVTerm to the enclosing SBML object can be determined using the CVTerm methods such as CVTerm.getModelQualifierType() and CVTerm.getBiologicalQualifierType(). Callers will typically want to use the present method to find out which one of the other two methods to call to find out the specific relationship.
def libsbml.CVTerm.getResources | ( | self, | |
args | |||
) |
Returns the resource references for this CVTerm object.
getResources() XMLAttributes
<rdf:Description>
, with a <rdf:Bag>
element inside of it containing one or more <rdf:li>
elements. The following template illustrates the structure: <rdf:Description rdf:about="#meta id"> HISTORY <RELATION_ELEMENT> <rdf:Bag> <rdf:li rdf:resource="resource URI" /> ... </rdf:Bag> </RELATION_ELEMENT> ... </rdf:Description>In the template above, the placeholder meta id stands for the element's meta identifier, which is a field available on all SBML components derived from the SBase base object class. The dotted portions are optional, and the ellipses ... are placeholders for zero or more elements of the same form as the immediately preceding element.
The resource URI values shown in the template above are stored internally in CVTerm objects using an XMLAttributes object. Each attribute stored inside the XMLAttributes will have the same name (specifically, "rdf:resource
") but a different value, and the value will be a resource URI shown in the XML template above.
A valid CVTerm entity must always have at least one resource and a value for the relationship qualifier.
def libsbml.CVTerm.getResourceURI | ( | self, | |
args | |||
) |
Returns the value of the nth resource for this CVTerm object.
getResourceURI(long n) string
<rdf:Description>
, with a <rdf:Bag>
element inside of it containing one or more <rdf:li>
elements. The following template illustrates the structure: <rdf:Description rdf:about="#meta id"> HISTORY <RELATION_ELEMENT> <rdf:Bag> <rdf:li rdf:resource="resource URI" /> ... </rdf:Bag> </RELATION_ELEMENT> ... </rdf:Description>In the template above, the placeholder meta id stands for the element's meta identifier, which is a field available on all SBML components derived from the SBase base object class. The dotted portions are optional, and the ellipses ... are placeholders for zero or more elements of the same form as the immediately preceding element.
The fragment above illustrates that there can be more than one resource referenced by a given relationship annotation (i.e., the resource URI values associated with a particular RELATION_ELEMENT). LibSBML stores all resource URIs in a single CVTerm object for a given relationship. Callers can use CVTerm.getNumResources() to find out how many resources are stored in this CVTerm object, then call this method to retrieve the nth resource URI.
n | the index of the resource to query. |
def libsbml.CVTerm.hasRequiredAttributes | ( | self, | |
args | |||
) |
def libsbml.CVTerm.removeNestedCVTerm | ( | self, | |
n | |||
) |
def libsbml.CVTerm.removeResource | ( | self, | |
resource | |||
) |
Removes a resource URI from the set of resources stored in this CVTerm object.
removeResource(string resource) int
resource | a string representing the resource URI to remove; e.g., 'http://www.geneontology.org/#GO:0005892' . |
def libsbml.CVTerm.setBiologicalQualifierType | ( | self, | |
args | |||
) |
This method has multiple variants; they differ in the arguments they accept.
setBiologicalQualifierType(long type) int setBiologicalQualifierType(string qualifier) int
Each variant is described separately below.
setBiologicalQualifierType(string qualifier)
Sets the biology qualifier type code of this CVTerm object.
qualifier | the string representing a biology qualifier. |
setBiologicalQualifierType(long type)
Sets the biology qualifier type of this CVTerm object.
type | the biology qualifier type. |
def libsbml.CVTerm.setModelQualifierType | ( | self, | |
args | |||
) |
This method has multiple variants; they differ in the arguments they accept.
setModelQualifierType(long type) int setModelQualifierType(string qualifier) int
Each variant is described separately below.
setModelQualifierType(string qualifier)
Sets the model qualifier type value of this CVTerm object.
qualifier | the string representing a model qualifier. |
setModelQualifierType(long type)
Sets the model qualifier type of this CVTerm object.
type | the model qualifier type. |
def libsbml.CVTerm.setQualifierType | ( | self, | |
type | |||
) |
Sets the qualifier code of this CVTerm object.
setQualifierType(long type) int
type | the qualifier type. |