Another Excel to RDF converter for SKOS vocabs, but one that include profile-based validation of results.
The file VocExcel-template_040.xlsx in this repository's templates/ folder is the Excel template to be used to create vocabularies. The template contains all the basics needed to understand what to do including: a Read Me sheet which has notes on use, examples of various vocabularies, and lookup lists of values (e.g. organisations). Vocab authors only need this file to create vocabulary content by filling it out.
Note: the example sheets for version 0.4.0 are in the tests folder. There includes both complex and simple valid vocabularies
There are other versions of template in the templates/ folder. You are free to use any of them however the latest is usually the greatest! Currently the validation tool supports versions 0.3.0 and 0.2.1.
Use one Excel workbook per vocabulary. The recommendation in completing a vocabulary is to go through the read me sheet in version 0.4.0, reference your work with the example sheets,
Several forms of use of this tool do not require any installation - see the next section. However, to run the tool as a Python script or a module, you will need to:
- have Python (3.6+) installed on your computer
- create a poetry environment
- install the necessary packages in that environment
- when running a poetry environment, some IDE's like python will automatically install the pyproject.toml else, there would have to be a manual install with something like 'poetry install'
- run the script, convert.py, using the version of Python in your poetry environment
There are several methods available to process vocabularies entered into the Excel template using resources in this repository:
- Windows command line
- Shell command line script (Linux/Unix/Mac)
- Python script
- Python module
- Online - coming soon!
Methods 1 & 2 all use the same options. See the section Command Line Arguments.
There will soon be an Windows EXE file, vocexcel.exe, in the vocexcel/bin/ folder that can be used like this:
c:\\Users\\user> vocexcel.exe vocabulary-x.xlsx
The command above will generate either a vocabulary RDF file in the same directory as the input Excel file, or an Excel file from the RDF file, based on file endings.
The script vocexcel/bin/vocexcel.sh can be run as a shell script on Linux/Unix/Mac with the same options as the Windows EXE program.
~$ sh vocexcel.sh vocabulary-x.xlsx
Note that to run this shell script, you need to have installed a Python environment that contains this program's dependencies which are all listed in requirements.txt. The shell script then needs to be told where the Python environment is: see the PYTHON variable in the script.
The script will work out, based on file endings, if this is an Excel to RDF or an RDF to Excel conversion.
The Python script convert.py in the vocexcel/ directory can be run on Windows/Unix/Linux/Mac systems like this:
~$ python convert.py vocabulary-x.xlsx
As long as a Python environment containing the program's needed modules, listed in requirements.txt are installed. As above, the script will work out, based on file endings, if this is an Excel to RDF or an RDF to Excel conversion.
The converter program has two methods that can be called from other Python programs, perhaps as part of a chain of processing, for Excel to RDF and RDF to Excel: rdf_to_excel() & excel_to_rdf(). For this, you would need code like this:
from vocexcel import convert
from pathlib import Path
convert.rdf_to_excel(Path(".") / "path" / "to" /"vocab-file.xlsx")
Or similar code for the reverse conversion, RDF to Excel using convert.excel_to_rdf().
This will create an output file, vocab-file.ttl for Excel to RDF, in the same directory as the input file.
There are several options for the conversion functions, just see the functions themselves in vocexcel/convert.py.
Coming soon!.
We will be providing a web page for easy use.
All command line options can be printed out by the Windows, Linux/Unix/Mac versions of the tools by specifying -h for 'help' like this:
> vocexcel.exe -h ~$ sh vocexcel.sh -h
It will print something like this with any updates actually available in the tool:
usage: convert.py [-h] [-v] [-lp] [-val] [-p PROFILE] [-of {file,string}] [-s SHEET] excel_file
positional arguments:
excel_file The Excel file to convert to a SKOS vocabulary in RDF
optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-v, --version The version of this copy of VocExel. (default: False)
-lp, --listprofiles This flag, if set, must be the only flag supplied. It will cause the program to list all the vocabulary profiles that this converter, indicating
both their URI and their short token for use with the -p (--profile) flag when converting Excel files (default: False)
-val, --validate Validate output file (default: False)
-p PROFILE, --profile PROFILE
A profile - a specified information model - for a vocabulary. This tool understands several profiles andyou can choose which one you want to convert
the Excel file according to. The list of profiles - URIs and their corresponding tokens - supported by VocExcel, can be found by running the program
with the flag -lp or --listprofiles. (default: vocpub)
-of {file,string}, --outputformat {file,string}
The format of the vocabulary output. (default: file)
-s SHEET, --sheet SHEET
The sheet within the target Excel Workbook to process (default: vocabulary)
Note that the excel_file parameter is always required except for the 'help' (-h) option, so if you want tpo print out the version of the program, you will need to put in a fake file location like this:
> vocexcel.exe -v . ~$ sh vocexcel.sh -v .
This code is licensed using the GPL v3 licence. See the LICENSE file for the deed. Note that Excel is property of Microsoft.