Inheritance diagram for libsbml.SBase:

Detailed Description

SBML's SBase class, base class of most SBML objects.

Most components in SBML are derived from a single abstract base type, SBase. In addition to serving as the parent class for most other classes of objects in SBML, this base type is designed to allow a modeler or a software package to attach arbitrary information to each major element or list in an SBML model.

SBase has an optional subelement called 'notes'. It is intended to serve as a place for storing optional information intended to be seen by humans. An example use of the 'notes' element would be to contain formatted user comments about the model element in which the 'notes' element is enclosed. There are certain conditions on the XHTML content permitted inside the 'notes' element; please consult the SBML specification document corresponding to the SBML Level and Version of your model for more information about the requirements for 'notes' content.

SBase has another optional subelement called 'annotation'. Whereas the 'notes' element described above is a container for content to be shown directly to humans, the 'annotation' element is a container for optional software-generated content not meant to be shown to humans. The element's content type is XML type 'any', allowing essentially arbitrary data content. SBML places only a few restrictions on the organization of the content; these are intended to help software tools read and write the data as well as help reduce conflicts between annotations added by different tools. As is the case with 'notes', it is important to refer to the SBML specification document corresponding to the SBML Level and Version of your model for more information about the requirements for 'annotation' content.

It is worth pointing out that the 'annotation' element in the definition of SBase exists in order that software developers may attach optional application-specific data to the elements in an SBML model. However, it is important that this facility not be misused. In particular, it is critical that data essential to a model definition or that can be encoded in existing SBML elements is not stored in 'annotation'. Parameter values, functional dependencies between model elements, etc., should not be recorded as annotations. It is crucial to keep in mind the fact that data placed in annotations can be freely ignored by software applications. If such data affects the interpretation of a model, then software interoperability is greatly impeded.

SBML Level 2 introduced an optional SBase attribute named 'metaid' for supporting metadata annotations using RDF (Resource Description Format). The attribute value has the data type XML ID, the XML identifier type, which means each 'metaid' value must be globally unique within an SBML file. (Importantly, this uniqueness criterion applies across any attribute with type XML ID, not just the 'metaid' attribute used by SBML—something to be aware of if your application-specific XML content inside the 'annotation' subelement happens to use XML ID.) The 'metaid' value serves to identify a model component for purposes such as referencing that component from metadata placed within 'annotation' subelements.

Beginning with SBML Level 2 Version 2, SBase has an optional attribute named 'sboTerm' for supporting the use of the Systems Biology Ontology. In SBML proper, the data type of the attribute is a string of the form 'SBO:NNNNNNN', where 'NNNNNNN' is a seven digit integer number; libSBML simplifies the representation by only storing the 'NNNNNNN' integer portion. Thus, in libSBML, the 'sboTerm' attribute on SBase has data type int, and SBO identifiers are stored simply as integers. (For convenience, SBase offers methods for returning both the integer form and a text-string form of the SBO identifier.) SBO terms are a type of optional annotation, and each different class of SBML object derived from SBase imposes its own requirements about the values permitted for 'sboTerm'. More details can be found in SBML specifications for Level 2 Version 2 and above.

Finally, note that, in the list of methods on SBase, there is no public constructor because SBase is an abstract class. The constructors reside in the subclasses derived from SBase.

Standard format for annotations linking data resources

SBML Level 2 Versions 2, 3 and 4, and Level 3, define a proposed regular format for encoding two particular categories of annotations: (a) references to controlled vocabulary terms and database identifiers which define and describe biological and biochemical entities in a model; and (b) descriptions of the provenance of a model, including its author(s) and modification history.

Public Member Functions
def	addCVTerm (self, term, newBag=False)
	Adds a copy of the given CVTerm object to this SBML object. More...

def	appendAnnotation (self, args)
	This method has multiple variants; they differ in the arguments they accept. More...

def	appendNotes (self, args)
	This method has multiple variants; they differ in the arguments they accept. More...

def	clone (self)
	Creates and returns a deep copy of this SBase object. More...

def	connectToChild (self)

def	deleteDisabledPlugins (self, recursive=True)
	Deletes all information stored in disabled plugins. More...

def	disablePackage (self, pkgURI, pkgPrefix)
	Disables the given SBML Level 3 package on this object. More...

def	enablePackage (self, pkgURI, pkgPrefix, flag)
	Enables or disables the given SBML Level 3 package on this object. More...

def	getAncestorOfType (self, args)
	This method has multiple variants; they differ in the arguments they accept. More...

def	getAnnotation (self, args)
	Returns the content of the 'annotation' subelement of this object as a tree of XMLNode objects. More...

def	getAnnotationString (self, args)
	Returns the content of the 'annotation' subelement of this object as a character string. More...

def	getColumn (self)
	Returns the column number where this object first appears in the XML representation of the SBML document. More...

def	getCVTerm (self, n)
	Returns the nth CVTerm in the list of CVTerms of this SBML object. More...

def	getCVTerms (self, args)
	Returns a list of CVTerm objects in the annotations of this SBML object. More...

def	getDisabledPlugin (self, args)
	Returns the nth disabled plug-in object (extension interface) for an SBML Level 3 package extension. More...

def	getElementByMetaId (self, args)
	Returns the first child element it can find with a specific 'metaid' attribute value, or `None` if no such object is found. More...

def	getElementBySId (self, args)
	Returns the first child element found that has the given `id` in the model-wide `SId` namespace, or `None` if no such object is found. More...

def	getElementName (self)
	Returns the XML element name of this object. More...

def	getId (self)
	Returns the value of the 'id' attribute of this SBML object, if it has one, or the 'variable' attribute of a Rule, or the 'symbol' attribute of an InitialAssignment. More...

def	getIdAttribute (self)
	Returns the value of the 'id' attribute of this SBML object. More...

def	getLevel (self)
	Returns the SBML Level of the SBMLDocument object containing this object. More...

def	getLine (self)
	Returns the line number where this object first appears in the XML representation of the SBML document. More...

def	getListOfAllElements (self, filter=None)
	Returns an SBaseList of all child SBase objects, including those nested to an arbitrary depth. More...

def	getListOfAllElementsFromPlugins (self, filter=None)
	Returns a List of all child SBase objects contained in SBML package plug-ins. More...

def	getMetaId (self)
	Returns the value of the 'metaid' attribute of this SBML object. More...

def	getModel (self)
	Returns the Model object for the SBML Document in which the current object is located. More...

def	getModelHistory (self, args)
	Returns the ModelHistory object, if any, attached to this object. More...

def	getName (self)
	Returns the value of the 'name' attribute of this SBML object. More...

def	getNamespaces (self)
	Returns a list of the XML Namespaces declared on the SBML document owning this object. More...

def	getNotes (self, args)
	Returns the content of the 'notes' subelement of this object as a tree of XMLNode objects. More...

def	getNotesString (self, args)
	Returns the content of the 'notes' subelement of this object as a string. More...

def	getNumCVTerms (self)
	Returns the number of CVTerm objects in the annotations of this SBML object. More...

def	getNumDisabledPlugins (self)
	Returns the number of disabled plug-in objects (extension interfaces) for SBML Level 3 package extensions known. More...

def	getNumPlugins (self)
	Returns the number of plug-in objects (extenstion interfaces) for SBML Level 3 package extensions known. More...

def	getPackageCoreVersion (self)
	Returns the SBML Core Version within the SBML Level of the actual object. More...

def	getPackageName (self)
	Returns the name of the SBML Level 3 package in which this element is defined. More...

def	getPackageVersion (self)
	Returns the Version of the SBML Level 3 package to which this element belongs to. More...

def	getParentSBMLObject (self, args)
	Returns the parent SBML object containing this object. More...

def	getPlugin (self, args)
	This method has multiple variants; they differ in the arguments they accept. More...

def	getPrefix (self)
	Returns the XML namespace prefix of this element. More...

def	getResourceBiologicalQualifier (self, resource)
	Returns the MIRIAM biological qualifier associated with the given resource. More...

def	getResourceModelQualifier (self, resource)
	Returns the MIRIAM model qualifier associated with the given resource. More...

def	getSBMLDocument (self, args)
	Returns the SBMLDocument object containing this object instance. More...

def	getSBOTerm (self)
	Returns the integer portion of the value of the 'sboTerm' attribute of this object. More...

def	getSBOTermAsURL (self)
	Returns the URL representation of the 'sboTerm' attribute of this object. More...

def	getSBOTermID (self)
	Returns the string representation of the 'sboTerm' attribute of this object. More...

def	getTypeCode (self)
	Returns the libSBML type code for this object. More...

def	getURI (self)
	Gets the namespace URI to which this element belongs to. More...

def	getVersion (self)
	Returns the Version within the SBML Level of the SBMLDocument object containing this object. More...

def	hasValidLevelVersionNamespaceCombination (self)
	Predicate returning `true` if this object's level/version and namespace values correspond to a valid SBML specification. More...

def	isPackageEnabled (self, pkgName)
	Predicate returning `True` if the given SBML Level 3 package is enabled with this object. More...

def	isPackageURIEnabled (self, pkgURI)
	Predicate returning `True` if an SBML Level 3 package with the given URI is enabled with this object. More...

def	isPkgEnabled (self, pkgName)
	Predicate returning `True` if the given SBML Level 3 package is enabled with this object. More...

def	isPkgURIEnabled (self, pkgURI)
	Predicate returning `True` if an SBML Level 3 package with the given URI is enabled with this object. More...

def	isSetAnnotation (self)
	Predicate returning `True` if this object's 'annotation' subelement exists and has content. More...

def	isSetId (self)
	Predicate returning `True` if a call to getId() returns a non-empty string. More...

def	isSetIdAttribute (self)
	Predicate returning `True` if this object's 'id' attribute is set. More...

def	isSetMetaId (self)
	Predicate returning `True` if this object's 'metaid' attribute is set. More...

def	isSetModelHistory (self)
	Predicate returning `True` if this object has a ModelHistory object attached to it. More...

def	isSetName (self)
	Predicate returning `True` if this object's 'name' attribute is set. More...

def	isSetNotes (self)
	Predicate returning `True` if this object's 'notes' subelement exists and has content. More...

def	isSetSBOTerm (self)
	Predicate returning `True` if this object's 'sboTerm' attribute is set. More...

def	isSetUserData (self)
	Predicate returning true or false depending on whether the user data of this element has been set. More...

def	matchesRequiredSBMLNamespacesForAddition (self, args)
	Returns `True` if this object's set of XML namespaces are a subset of the given object's XML namespaces. More...

def	matchesSBMLNamespaces (self, args)
	Returns `True` if this object's set of XML namespaces are the same as the given object's XML namespaces. More...

def	removeFromParentAndDelete (self)
	Removes this object from its parent. More...

def	removeTopLevelAnnotationElement (self, args)
	Removes the top-level element within the 'annotation' subelement of this SBML object with the given name and optional URI. More...

def	renameMetaIdRefs (self, oldid, newid)
	Replaces all uses of a given meta identifier attribute value with another value. More...

def	renameSIdRefs (self, oldid, newid)
	Replaces all uses of a given `SIdRef` type attribute value with another value. More...

def	renameUnitSIdRefs (self, oldid, newid)
	Replaces all uses of a given `UnitSIdRef` type attribute value with another value. More...

def	replaceTopLevelAnnotationElement (self, args)
	This method has multiple variants; they differ in the arguments they accept. More...

def	setAnnotation (self, args)
	This method has multiple variants; they differ in the arguments they accept. More...

def	setId (self, sid)
	Sets the value of the 'id' attribute of this SBML object. More...

def	setIdAttribute (self, sid)
	Sets the value of the 'id' attribute of this SBML object. More...

def	setMetaId (self, metaid)
	Sets the value of the meta-identifier attribute of this SBML object. More...

def	setModelHistory (self, history)
	Sets the ModelHistory of this object. More...

def	setName (self, name)
	Sets the value of the 'name' attribute of this SBML object. More...

def	setNamespaces (self, xmlns)
	Sets the namespaces relevant of this SBML object. More...

def	setNotes (self, args)
	This method has multiple variants; they differ in the arguments they accept. More...

def	setSBOTerm (self, args)
	This method has multiple variants; they differ in the arguments they accept. More...

def	toSBML (self)
	Returns a string consisting of a partial SBML corresponding to just this object. More...

def	toXMLNode (self)
	Returns this element as an XMLNode. More...

def	unsetAnnotation (self)
	Unsets the value of the 'annotation' subelement of this SBML object. More...

def	unsetCVTerms (self)
	Clears the list of CVTerm objects attached to this SBML object. More...

def	unsetId (self)
	Unsets the value of the 'id' attribute of this SBML object. More...

def	unsetIdAttribute (self)
	Unsets the value of the 'id' attribute of this SBML object. More...

def	unsetMetaId (self)
	Unsets the value of the 'metaid' attribute of this SBML object. More...

def	unsetModelHistory (self)
	Unsets the ModelHistory object attached to this object. More...

def	unsetName (self)
	Unsets the value of the 'name' attribute of this SBML object. More...

def	unsetNotes (self)
	Unsets the value of the 'notes' subelement of this SBML object. More...

def	unsetSBOTerm (self)
	Unsets the value of the 'sboTerm' attribute of this SBML object. More...

def	unsetUserData (self)
	Unsets the user data of this element. More...

Member Function Documentation

def libsbml.SBase.addCVTerm	(	self,
		term,
		newBag = `False`
	)

Adds a copy of the given CVTerm object to this SBML object.

addCVTerm(CVTerm term, bool newBag)   int
addCVTerm(CVTerm term)   int

Parameters

term	the CVTerm to assign.
newBag	if `True`, creates a new RDF bag with the same identifier as a previous bag, and if `False`, adds the term to an existing RDF bag with the same type of qualifier as the term being added.

Returns

integer value indicating success/failure of the function. The possible values returned by this function are:

LIBSBML_OPERATION_SUCCESS
LIBSBML_OPERATION_FAILED
LIBSBML_UNEXPECTED_ATTRIBUTE, if this object lacks a 'metaid' attribute
LIBSBML_INVALID_OBJECT

Note: Since the CV Term uses the 'metaid' attribute of the object as a reference, if the object has no 'metaid' attribute value set, then the CVTerm will not be added.; This method should be used with some caution. The fact that this method copies the object passed to it means that the caller will be left holding a physically different object instance than the one contained inside this object. Changes made to the original object instance (such as resetting attribute values) will not affect the instance in this object. In addition, the caller should make sure to free the original object if it is no longer being used, or else a memory leak will result. Please see other methods on this class (particularly a corresponding method whose name begins with the word create) for alternatives that do not lead to these issues.; Owing to the way that language interfaces are created in libSBML, this documentation may show methods that define default values for parameters with text that has the form 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.SBase.appendAnnotation	(	self,
		args
	)

This method has multiple variants; they differ in the arguments they accept.

appendAnnotation(XMLNode annotation)   int
appendAnnotation(string annotation)   int

Each variant is described separately below.

Method variant with the following signature:

appendAnnotation(XMLNode annotation)

Appends the given annotation to the 'annotation' subelement of this object.

Whereas the SBase 'notes' subelement is a container for content to be shown directly to humans, the 'annotation' element is a container for optional software-generated content not meant to be shown to humans. Every object derived from SBase can have its own value for 'annotation'. The element's content type is XML type 'any', allowing essentially arbitrary well-formed XML data content.

SBML places a few restrictions on the organization of the content of annotations; these are intended to help software tools read and write the data as well as help reduce conflicts between annotations added by different tools. Please see the SBML specifications for more details.

Unlike SBase.setAnnotation() or SBase.setAnnotation(), this method allows other annotations to be preserved when an application adds its own data.

Parameters

annotation an XML structure that is to be copied and appended to the content of the 'annotation' subelement of this object.

Returns

integer value indicating success/failure of the function. The possible values returned by this function are:

LIBSBML_OPERATION_SUCCESS
LIBSBML_OPERATION_FAILED
LIBSBML_UNEXPECTED_ATTRIBUTE (if the parent element does not have the 'metaid' attribute set)
LIBSBML_DUPLICATE_ANNOTATION_NS (if the parent was already annotated with the annotation in question)

See also: getAnnotationString(); isSetAnnotation(); setAnnotation(); setAnnotation(); appendAnnotation(); unsetAnnotation()

Method variant with the following signature:

appendAnnotation(string annotation)

Appends the given annotation to the 'annotation' subelement of this object.

Whereas the SBase 'notes' subelement is a container for content to be shown directly to humans, the 'annotation' element is a container for optional software-generated content not meant to be shown to humans. Every object derived from SBase can have its own value for 'annotation'. The element's content type is XML type 'any', allowing essentially arbitrary well-formed XML data content.

SBML places a few restrictions on the organization of the content of annotations; these are intended to help software tools read and write the data as well as help reduce conflicts between annotations added by different tools. Please see the SBML specifications for more details.

Unlike SBase.setAnnotation() or SBase.setAnnotation(), this method allows other annotations to be preserved when an application adds its own data.

Parameters

annotation an XML string that is to be copied and appended to the content of the 'annotation' subelement of this object.

Returns

integer value indicating success/failure of the function. The possible values returned by this function are:

LIBSBML_OPERATION_SUCCESS
LIBSBML_OPERATION_FAILED
LIBSBML_UNEXPECTED_ATTRIBUTE (if the parent element does not have the 'metaid' attribute set)
LIBSBML_DUPLICATE_ANNOTATION_NS (if the parent was already annotated with the annotation in question)

See also: getAnnotationString(); isSetAnnotation(); setAnnotation(); setAnnotation(); appendAnnotation(); unsetAnnotation()

def libsbml.SBase.appendNotes	(	self,
		args
	)

This method has multiple variants; they differ in the arguments they accept.

appendNotes(XMLNode notes)   int
appendNotes(string notes)   int

Each variant is described separately below.

Method variant with the following signature:

appendNotes(string notes)

Appends the given notes to the 'notes' subelement of this object.

The content of the parameter notes is copied.

The optional SBML element named 'notes', present on every major SBML component type, is intended as a place for storing optional information intended to be seen by humans. An example use of the 'notes' element would be to contain formatted user comments about the model element in which the 'notes' element is enclosed. Every object derived directly or indirectly from type SBase can have a separate value for 'notes', allowing users considerable freedom when adding comments to their models.

The format of 'notes' elements must be XHTML 1.0. To help verify the formatting of 'notes' content, libSBML provides the static utility method SyntaxChecker.hasExpectedXHTMLSyntax(); however, readers are urged to consult the appropriate SBML specification document for the Level and Version of their model for more in-depth explanations. The SBML Level 2 and 3 specifications have considerable detail about how 'notes' element content must be structured.

Parameters

notes an XML string that is to appended to the content of the 'notes' subelement of this object.

Returns

integer value indicating success/failure of the function. The possible values returned by this function are:

See also: getNotesString(); isSetNotes(); setNotes(); setNotes(); appendNotes(); unsetNotes(); SyntaxChecker.hasExpectedXHTMLSyntax()

Method variant with the following signature:

appendNotes(XMLNode notes)

Appends the given notes to the 'notes' subelement of this object.

The content of notes is copied.

The optional SBML element named 'notes', present on every major SBML component type, is intended as a place for storing optional information intended to be seen by humans. An example use of the 'notes' element would be to contain formatted user comments about the model element in which the 'notes' element is enclosed. Every object derived directly or indirectly from type SBase can have a separate value for 'notes', allowing users considerable freedom when adding comments to their models.

The format of 'notes' elements must be XHTML 1.0. To help verify the formatting of 'notes' content, libSBML provides the static utility method SyntaxChecker.hasExpectedXHTMLSyntax(); however, readers are urged to consult the appropriate SBML specification document for the Level and Version of their model for more in-depth explanations. The SBML Level 2 and 3 specifications have considerable detail about how 'notes' element content must be structured.

Parameters

notes an XML node structure that is to appended to the content of the 'notes' subelement of this object.

Returns

integer value indicating success/failure of the function. The possible values returned by this function are:

See also: getNotesString(); isSetNotes(); setNotes(); setNotes(); appendNotes(); unsetNotes(); SyntaxChecker.hasExpectedXHTMLSyntax()

def libsbml.SBase.clone ( self )

Creates and returns a deep copy of this SBase object.

clone()   SBase

Returns: the (deep) copy of this SBase object.

def libsbml.SBase.connectToChild ( self )

connectToChild()

def libsbml.SBase.deleteDisabledPlugins	(	self,
		recursive = `True`
	)

Deletes all information stored in disabled plugins.

deleteDisabledPlugins(bool recursive)
deleteDisabledPlugins()

If the plugin is re-enabled later, it will then not have any previously-stored information.

: SBML Level 3 consists of a Core definition that can be extended via optional SBML Level 3 packages. A given model may indicate that it uses one or more SBML packages, and likewise, a software tool may be able to support one or more packages. LibSBML does not come preconfigured with all possible packages included and enabled, in part because not all package specifications have been finalized. To support the ability for software systems to enable support for the Level 3 packages they choose, libSBML features a plug-in mechanism. Each SBML Level 3 package is implemented in a separate code plug-in that can be enabled by the application to support working with that SBML package. A given SBML model may thus contain not only objects defined by SBML Level 3 Core, but also objects created by libSBML plug-ins supporting additional Level 3 packages.

: If a plugin is disabled, the package information it contains is no longer considered to be part of the SBML document for the purposes of searching the document or writing out the document. However, the information is still retained, so if the plugin is enabled again, the same information will once again be available, and will be written out to the final model.

Parameters

recursive if True, the disabled information will be deleted also from all child elements, otherwise only from this SBase element.

See also: getNumDisabledPlugins()

def libsbml.SBase.disablePackage	(	self,
		pkgURI,
		pkgPrefix
	)

Disables the given SBML Level 3 package on this object.

disablePackage(string pkgURI, string pkgPrefix)   int

This method disables the specified package on this object and other objects connected by child-parent links in the same SBMLDocument object.

An example of when this may be useful is during construction of model components when mixing existing and new models. Suppose your application read an SBML document containing a model that used the SBML Hierarchical Model Composition (“comp”) package, and extracted parts of that model in order to construct a new model in memory. The new, in-memory model will not accept a component drawn from an other SBMLDocument with different package namespace declarations. You could reconstruct the same namespaces in the in-memory model first, but as a shortcut, you could also disable the package namespace on the object being added. Here is a code example to help clarify this:

 import sys
 import os.path
 from libsbml import *
 
 # We read an SBML L3V1 model that uses the 'comp' package.
 
 doc = readSBML('sbml-file-with-comp-elements.xml');
 if doc.getNumErrors() > 0:
   print('readSBML encountered errors while reading the file.')
   doc.printErrors()
   sys.exit(1)
 
 # We extract one of the species from the model.
 
 model = doc.getModel()
 if model == None:
   print('Unable to retrieve Model object')
   sys.exit(1)
 
 s1 = model.getSpecies(0)
 if s1 == None:
   print('Unable to retrieve Species object')
   sys.exit(1)
 
 # We construct a new model.
 # This model does not use the 'comp' package.
 
 try:
   newDoc = SBMLDocument(3, 1)
 except ValueError:
   print('Could not create SBMLDocument object')
   sys.exit(1)
 
 newModel = newDoc.createModel()
 if newModel == None:
   print('Unable to create new Model object')
   sys.exit(1)
 
 # The following would normally fail with an error, because
 # addSpecies() would first check that the parent of the given
 # object has namespaces declared, and will discover that s1
 # does but newModel does not.
 
 #   newModel.addSpecies(s1)
 
 # However, if we disable the 'comp' package on s1, then the
 # call to addSpecies will work.
 
 compNS = 'http://www.sbml.org/sbml/level3/version1/comp/version1'
 status = s1.disablePackage(compNS, 'comp')
 if status != LIBSBML_OPERATION_SUCCESS:
   print('Unable to disable package.')
   sys.exit(1)
 
 newSpecies = newModel.addSpecies(s1)   # This will work now.
 if newSpecies == None:
   print('Could not add Species')       # (This will not happen,
   sys.exit(1)                          # but always check errors.)

Parameters

pkgURI	the URI of the package.
pkgPrefix	the XML prefix of the package.

Returns

integer value indicating success/failure of the function. The possible values returned by this function are:

See also: enablePackage()

def libsbml.SBase.enablePackage	(	self,
		pkgURI,
		pkgPrefix,
		flag
	)

Enables or disables the given SBML Level 3 package on this object.

enablePackage(string pkgURI, string pkgPrefix, bool flag)   int

This method enables the specified package on this object and other objects connected by child-parent links in the same SBMLDocument object. This method is the converse of SBase.disablePackage().

Parameters

pkgURI	the URI of the package.
pkgPrefix	the XML prefix of the package.
flag	whether to enable (`True`) or disable (`False`) the package.

Returns

integer value indicating success/failure of the function. The possible values returned by this function are:

See also: disablePackage()

def libsbml.SBase.getAncestorOfType	(	self,
		args
	)

This method has multiple variants; they differ in the arguments they accept.

getAncestorOfType(int type, string pkgName)   SBase
getAncestorOfType(int type)   SBase

Each variant is described separately below.

Method variant with the following signature:

getAncestorOfType(int type, string pkgName = 'core')

Returns the first ancestor object that has the given SBML type code from the given package.

LibSBML attaches an identifying code to every kind of SBML object. These are known as SBML type codes. In the Python language interface for libSBML, the type codes are defined as static integer constants in the interface class libsbml. The names of the type codes all begin with the characters SBML_.

This method searches the tree of objects that are parents of this object, and returns the first one that has the given SBML type code from the given pkgName.

Parameters

type	the SBML type code of the object sought.
pkgName	(optional) the short name of an SBML Level 3 package to which the sought-after object must belong.

Returns: the ancestor SBML object of this SBML object that corresponds to the given SBML object type code, or None if no ancestor exists.

Warning: The optional argument pkgName must be used for all type codes from SBML Level 3 packages. Otherwise, the function will search the 'core' namespace alone, not find any corresponding elements, and return None.

Note: Owing to the way that language interfaces are created in libSBML, this documentation may show methods that define default values for parameters with text that has the form 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.

Method variant with the following signature:

getAncestorOfType(int type, string pkgName = 'core')

Returns the first ancestor object that has the given SBML type code from the given package.

LibSBML attaches an identifying code to every kind of SBML object. These are known as SBML type codes. In the Python language interface for libSBML, the type codes are defined as static integer constants in the interface class libsbml. The names of the type codes all begin with the characters SBML_.

This method searches the tree of objects that are parents of this object, and returns the first one that has the given SBML type code from the given pkgName.

Parameters

type	the SBML type code of the object sought.
pkgName	(optional) the short name of an SBML Level 3 package to which the sought-after object must belong.

Returns: the ancestor SBML object of this SBML object that corresponds to the given SBML object type code, or None if no ancestor exists.

Warning: The optional argument pkgName must be used for all type codes from SBML Level 3 packages. Otherwise, the function will search the 'core' namespace alone, not find any corresponding elements, and return None.

Note: Owing to the way that language interfaces are created in libSBML, this documentation may show methods that define default values for parameters with text that has the form 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.SBase.getAnnotation	(	self,
		args
	)

Returns the content of the 'annotation' subelement of this object as a tree of XMLNode objects.

getAnnotation()   XMLNode

: Whereas the SBML 'notes' subelement is a container for content to be shown directly to humans, the 'annotation' element is a container for optional software-generated content not meant to be shown to humans. Every object derived from SBase can have its own value for 'annotation'. The element's content type is XML type 'any', allowing essentially arbitrary well-formed XML data content.

SBML places a few restrictions on the organization of the content of annotations; these are intended to help software tools read and write the data as well as help reduce conflicts between annotations added by different tools. Please see the SBML specifications for more details.

The annotations returned by this method will be in XML form. LibSBML provides an object model and related interfaces for certain specific kinds of annotations, namely model history information and RDF content. See the ModelHistory, CVTerm and RDFAnnotationParser classes for more information about the facilities available.

Returns: the annotation of this SBML object as a tree of XMLNode objects.

See also: getAnnotationString(); isSetAnnotation(); setAnnotation(); setAnnotation(); appendAnnotation(); appendAnnotation(); unsetAnnotation()

def libsbml.SBase.getAnnotationString	(	self,
		args
	)

Returns the content of the 'annotation' subelement of this object as a character string.

getAnnotationString()   string

: Whereas the SBML 'notes' subelement is a container for content to be shown directly to humans, the 'annotation' element is a container for optional software-generated content not meant to be shown to humans. Every object derived from SBase can have its own value for 'annotation'. The element's content type is XML type 'any', allowing essentially arbitrary well-formed XML data content.

SBML places a few restrictions on the organization of the content of annotations; these are intended to help software tools read and write the data as well as help reduce conflicts between annotations added by different tools. Please see the SBML specifications for more details.

The annotations returned by this method will be in string form. See the method getAnnotation() for a version that returns annotations in XML form.

Returns: the annotation of this SBML object as a character string.

See also: getAnnotation(); isSetAnnotation(); setAnnotation(); setAnnotation(); appendAnnotation(); appendAnnotation(); unsetAnnotation()

def libsbml.SBase.getColumn ( self )

Returns the column number where this object first appears in the XML representation of the SBML document.

getColumn()   long

Returns: the column number of this SBML object. If this object was created programmatically and not read from a file, this method will return the value 0.

Note: The column number for each construct in an SBML model is set upon reading the model. The accuracy of the column number depends on the correctness of the XML representation of the model, and on the particular XML parser library being used. The former limitation relates to the following problem: if the model is actually invalid XML, then the parser may not be able to interpret the data correctly and consequently may not be able to establish the real column number. The latter limitation is simply that different parsers seem to have their own accuracy limitations, and out of all the parsers supported by libSBML, none have been 100% accurate in all situations. (At this time, libSBML supports the use of libxml2, Expat and Xerces.)

See also: getLine()

def libsbml.SBase.getCVTerm	(	self,
		n
	)

Returns the nth CVTerm in the list of CVTerms of this SBML object.

getCVTerm(long  n)   CVTerm

Parameters

n	long the index of the CVTerm to retrieve.

Returns: the nth CVTerm in the list of CVTerms for this SBML object. If the index n is invalid, None is returned.

def libsbml.SBase.getCVTerms	(	self,
		args
	)

Returns a list of CVTerm objects in the annotations of this SBML object.

getCVTerms()   List *

Returns: the list of CVTerms for this SBML object.

def libsbml.SBase.getDisabledPlugin	(	self,
		args
	)

Returns the nth disabled plug-in object (extension interface) for an SBML Level 3 package extension.

getDisabledPlugin(long  n)   SBasePlugin

If no such plugin exists, None is returned.

: SBML Level 3 consists of a Core definition that can be extended via optional SBML Level 3 packages. A given model may indicate that it uses one or more SBML packages, and likewise, a software tool may be able to support one or more packages. LibSBML does not come preconfigured with all possible packages included and enabled, in part because not all package specifications have been finalized. To support the ability for software systems to enable support for the Level 3 packages they choose, libSBML features a plug-in mechanism. Each SBML Level 3 package is implemented in a separate code plug-in that can be enabled by the application to support working with that SBML package. A given SBML model may thus contain not only objects defined by SBML Level 3 Core, but also objects created by libSBML plug-ins supporting additional Level 3 packages.

: If a plugin is disabled, the package information it contains is no longer considered to be part of the SBML document for the purposes of searching the document or writing out the document. However, the information is still retained, so if the plugin is enabled again, the same information will once again be available, and will be written out to the final model.

Parameters

n	the index of the disabled plug-in to return.

Returns: the nth disabled plug-in object (the libSBML extension interface) of a package extension. If the index n is invalid, None is returned.

See also: getNumDisabledPlugins(); getPlugin()

def libsbml.SBase.getElementByMetaId	(	self,
		args
	)

Returns the first child element it can find with a specific 'metaid' attribute value, or None if no such object is found.

getElementByMetaId(string metaid)   SBase

: The optional attribute named 'metaid', present on every major SBML component type, is for supporting metadata annotations using RDF (Resource Description Format). The attribute value has the data type XML ID, the XML identifier type, which means each 'metaid' value must be globally unique within an SBML file. The latter point is important, because the uniqueness criterion applies across any attribute with type ID anywhere in the file, not just the 'metaid' attribute used by SBML—something to be aware of if your application-specific XML content inside the 'annotation' subelement happens to use the XML ID type. Although SBML itself specifies the use of XML ID only for the 'metaid' attribute, SBML-compatible applications should be careful if they use XML ID's in XML portions of a model that are not defined by SBML, such as in the application-specific content of the 'annotation' subelement. Finally, note that LibSBML does not provide an explicit XML ID data type; it uses ordinary character strings, which is easier for applications to support.

Parameters

metaid string representing the 'metaid' attribute value of the object to find.

Returns: pointer to the first element found with the given meta-identifier.

def libsbml.SBase.getElementBySId	(	self,
		args
	)

Returns the first child element found that has the given id in the model-wide SId namespace, or None if no such object is found.

getElementBySId(string id)   SBase

Parameters

id	string representing the 'id' attribute value of the object to find.

Returns: pointer to the first element found with the given identifier.

def libsbml.SBase.getElementName ( self )

Returns the XML element name of this object.

getElementName()   string

This is overridden by subclasses to return a string appropriate to the SBML component. For example, Model defines it as returning 'model', CompartmentType defines it as returning 'compartmentType', and so on.

def libsbml.SBase.getId ( self )

Returns the value of the 'id' attribute of this SBML object, if it has one, or the 'variable' attribute of a Rule, or the 'symbol' attribute of an InitialAssignment.

getId()   string

The identifier given by an object's 'id' attribute value is used to identify the object within the SBML model definition. Other objects can refer to the component using this identifier. The data type of 'id' is always SId or a type derived from that, such as UnitSId, depending on the object in question. All data types are defined as follows:

letter ::= 'a'..'z','A'..'Z'
digit  ::= '0'..'9'
idChar ::= letter | digit | '_'
SId    ::= ( letter | '_' ) idChar*

The characters ( and ) are used for grouping, the character * 'zero or more times', and the character | indicates logical 'or'. The equality of SBML identifiers is determined by an exact character sequence match; i.e., comparisons must be performed in a case-sensitive manner. This applies to all uses of SId, SIdRef, and derived types.

Users need to be aware of some important API issues that are the result of the history of SBML and libSBML. Prior to SBML Level 3 Version 2, SBML defined 'id' and 'name' attributes on only a subset of SBML objects. To simplify the work of programmers, libSBML's API provided get, set, check, and unset on the SBase object class itself instead of on individual subobject classes. This made the get/set/etc. methods uniformly available on all objects in the libSBML API. LibSBML simply returned empty strings or otherwise did not act when the methods were applied to SBML objects that were not defined by the SBML specification to have 'id' or 'name' attributes. Additional complications arose with the rule and assignment objects: InitialAssignment, EventAssignment, AssignmentRule, and RateRule. In early versions of SBML, the rule object hierarchy was different, and in addition, then as now, they possess different attributes: 'variable' (for the rules and event assignments), 'symbol' (for initial assignments), or neither (for algebraic rules). Prior to SBML Level 3 Version 2, getId() would always return an empty string, and isSetId() would always return False for objects of these classes.

With the addition of 'id' and 'name' attributes on SBase in Level 3 Version 2, it became necessary to introduce a new way to interact with the attributes more consistently in libSBML to avoid breaking backward compatibility in the behavior of the original 'id' methods. For this reason, libSBML provides four functions (getIdAttribute(), setIdAttribute(), isSetIdAttribute(), and unsetIdAttribute()) that always act on the actual 'id' attribute inherited from SBase, regardless of the object's type. These new methods should be used instead of the older getId()/setId()/etc. methods unless the old behavior is somehow necessary. Regardless of the Level and Version of the SBML, these functions allow client applications to use more generalized code in some situations (for instance, when manipulating objects that are all known to have identifiers). If the object in question does not posess an 'id' attribute according to the SBML specification for the Level and Version in use, libSBML will not allow the identifier to be set, nor will it read or write 'id' attributes for those objects.

Returns: the id of this SBML object, or the 'variable' if the object is a Rule, or the 'symbol' if the object is an InitialAssignment.

Note: Because of the inconsistent behavior of this function with respect to assignments and rules, callers should use getIdAttribute() instead.

See also: getIdAttribute(); setIdAttribute(); isSetIdAttribute(); unsetIdAttribute()

def libsbml.SBase.getIdAttribute ( self )

Returns the value of the 'id' attribute of this SBML object.

getIdAttribute()   string

The identifier given by an object's 'id' attribute value is used to identify the object within the SBML model definition. Other objects can refer to the component using this identifier. The data type of 'id' is always SId or a type derived from that, such as UnitSId, depending on the object in question. All data types are defined as follows:

letter ::= 'a'..'z','A'..'Z'
digit  ::= '0'..'9'
idChar ::= letter | digit | '_'
SId    ::= ( letter | '_' ) idChar*

The characters ( and ) are used for grouping, the character * 'zero or more times', and the character | indicates logical 'or'. The equality of SBML identifiers is determined by an exact character sequence match; i.e., comparisons must be performed in a case-sensitive manner. This applies to all uses of SId, SIdRef, and derived types.

Users need to be aware of some important API issues that are the result of the history of SBML and libSBML. Prior to SBML Level 3 Version 2, SBML defined 'id' and 'name' attributes on only a subset of SBML objects. To simplify the work of programmers, libSBML's API provided get, set, check, and unset on the SBase object class itself instead of on individual subobject classes. This made the get/set/etc. methods uniformly available on all objects in the libSBML API. LibSBML simply returned empty strings or otherwise did not act when the methods were applied to SBML objects that were not defined by the SBML specification to have 'id' or 'name' attributes. Additional complications arose with the rule and assignment objects: InitialAssignment, EventAssignment, AssignmentRule, and RateRule. In early versions of SBML, the rule object hierarchy was different, and in addition, then as now, they possess different attributes: 'variable' (for the rules and event assignments), 'symbol' (for initial assignments), or neither (for algebraic rules). Prior to SBML Level 3 Version 2, getId() would always return an empty string, and isSetId() would always return False for objects of these classes.

With the addition of 'id' and 'name' attributes on SBase in Level 3 Version 2, it became necessary to introduce a new way to interact with the attributes more consistently in libSBML to avoid breaking backward compatibility in the behavior of the original 'id' methods. For this reason, libSBML provides four functions (getIdAttribute(), setIdAttribute(), isSetIdAttribute(), and unsetIdAttribute()) that always act on the actual 'id' attribute inherited from SBase, regardless of the object's type. These new methods should be used instead of the older getId()/setId()/etc. methods unless the old behavior is somehow necessary. Regardless of the Level and Version of the SBML, these functions allow client applications to use more generalized code in some situations (for instance, when manipulating objects that are all known to have identifiers). If the object in question does not posess an 'id' attribute according to the SBML specification for the Level and Version in use, libSBML will not allow the identifier to be set, nor will it read or write 'id' attributes for those objects.

Returns: the id of this SBML object, if set and valid for this level and version of SBML; an empty string otherwise.

Note: Because of the inconsistent behavior of this function with respect to assignments and rules, callers should use getIdAttribute() instead.

See also: setIdAttribute(); isSetIdAttribute(); unsetIdAttribute()

def libsbml.SBase.getLevel ( self )

Returns the SBML Level of the SBMLDocument object containing this object.

getLevel()   long

: LibSBML uses the class SBMLDocument as a top-level container for storing SBML content and data associated with it (such as warnings and error messages). An SBML model in libSBML is contained inside an SBMLDocument object. SBMLDocument corresponds roughly to the class SBML defined in the SBML Level 3 and Level 2 specifications, but it does not have a direct correspondence in SBML Level 1. (But, it is created by libSBML no matter whether the model is Level 1, Level 2 or Level 3.)

Returns: the SBML level of this SBML object.

See also: getVersion(); getNamespaces(); getPackageVersion()

def libsbml.SBase.getLine ( self )

Returns the line number where this object first appears in the XML representation of the SBML document.

getLine()   long

Returns: the line number of this SBML object. If this object was created programmatically and not read from a file, this method will return the value 0.

Note: The line number for each construct in an SBML model is set upon reading the model. The accuracy of the line number depends on the correctness of the XML representation of the model, and on the particular XML parser library being used. The former limitation relates to the following problem: if the model is actually invalid XML, then the parser may not be able to interpret the data correctly and consequently may not be able to establish the real line number. The latter limitation is simply that different parsers seem to have their own accuracy limitations, and out of all the parsers supported by libSBML, none have been 100% accurate in all situations. (At this time, libSBML supports the use of libxml2, Expat and Xerces.)

See also: getColumn()

def libsbml.SBase.getListOfAllElements	(	self,
		filter = `None`
	)

Returns an SBaseList of all child SBase objects, including those nested to an arbitrary depth.

getListOfAllElements(ElementFilter filter)   SBaseList
getListOfAllElements()   SBaseList

Returns: a list of all objects that are children of this object.

def libsbml.SBase.getListOfAllElementsFromPlugins	(	self,
		filter = `None`
	)

Returns a List of all child SBase objects contained in SBML package plug-ins.

getListOfAllElementsFromPlugins(ElementFilter filter)   SBaseList
getListOfAllElementsFromPlugins()   SBaseList

: SBML Level 3 consists of a Core definition that can be extended via optional SBML Level 3 packages. A given model may indicate that it uses one or more SBML packages, and likewise, a software tool may be able to support one or more packages. LibSBML does not come preconfigured with all possible packages included and enabled, in part because not all package specifications have been finalized. To support the ability for software systems to enable support for the Level 3 packages they choose, libSBML features a plug-in mechanism. Each SBML Level 3 package is implemented in a separate code plug-in that can be enabled by the application to support working with that SBML package. A given SBML model may thus contain not only objects defined by SBML Level 3 Core, but also objects created by libSBML plug-ins supporting additional Level 3 packages.

This method walks down the list of all SBML Level 3 packages used by this object and returns all child objects defined by those packages.

Returns: a pointer to a List of pointers to all children objects from plug-ins.

def libsbml.SBase.getMetaId ( self )

Returns the value of the 'metaid' attribute of this SBML object.

getMetaId()   string

: The optional attribute named 'metaid', present on every major SBML component type, is for supporting metadata annotations using RDF (Resource Description Format). The attribute value has the data type XML ID, the XML identifier type, which means each 'metaid' value must be globally unique within an SBML file. The latter point is important, because the uniqueness criterion applies across any attribute with type ID anywhere in the file, not just the 'metaid' attribute used by SBML—something to be aware of if your application-specific XML content inside the 'annotation' subelement happens to use the XML ID type. Although SBML itself specifies the use of XML ID only for the 'metaid' attribute, SBML-compatible applications should be careful if they use XML ID's in XML portions of a model that are not defined by SBML, such as in the application-specific content of the 'annotation' subelement. Finally, note that LibSBML does not provide an explicit XML ID data type; it uses ordinary character strings, which is easier for applications to support.

Returns: the meta-identifier of this SBML object.

See also: isSetMetaId(); setMetaId()

def libsbml.SBase.getModel ( self )

Returns the Model object for the SBML Document in which the current object is located.

getModel()   Model

Returns: the Model object for the SBML Document of this SBML object.

See also: getParentSBMLObject(); getSBMLDocument()

def libsbml.SBase.getModelHistory	(	self,
		args
	)

Returns the ModelHistory object, if any, attached to this object.

getModelHistory()   ModelHistory

Returns: the ModelHistory object attached to this object, or None if none exist.

Note: In SBML Level 2, model history annotations were only permitted on the Model element. In SBML Level 3, they are permitted on all SBML components derived from SBase.

def libsbml.SBase.getName ( self )

Returns the value of the 'name' attribute of this SBML object.

getName()   string

: In SBML Level 3 Version 2, the 'id' and 'name' attributes were moved to SBase directly, instead of being defined individually for many (but not all) objects. LibSBML has for a long time provided functions defined on SBase itself to get, set, and unset those attributes, which would fail or otherwise return empty strings if executed on any object for which those attributes were not defined. Now that all SBase objects define those attributes, those functions now succeed for any object with the appropriate level and version.

The 'name' attribute is optional and is not intended to be used for cross-referencing purposes within a model. Its purpose instead is to provide a human-readable label for the component. The data type of 'name' is the type string defined in XML Schema. SBML imposes no restrictions as to the content of 'name' attributes beyond those restrictions defined by the string type in XML Schema.

The recommended practice for handling 'name' is as follows. If a software tool has the capability for displaying the content of 'name' attributes, it should display this content to the user as a component's label instead of the component's 'id'. If the user interface does not have this capability (e.g., because it cannot display or use special characters in symbol names), or if the 'name' attribute is missing on a given component, then the user interface should display the value of the 'id' attribute instead. (Script language interpreters are especially likely to display 'id' instead of 'name'.)

As a consequence of the above, authors of systems that automatically generate the values of 'id' attributes should be aware some systems may display the 'id''s to the user. Authors therefore may wish to take some care to have their software create 'id' values that are: (a) reasonably easy for humans to type and read; and (b) likely to be meaningful, for example by making the 'id' attribute be an abbreviated form of the name attribute value.

An additional point worth mentioning is although there are restrictions on the uniqueness of 'id' values, there are no restrictions on the uniqueness of 'name' values in a model. This allows software applications leeway in assigning component identifiers.

Regardless of the level and version of the SBML, these functions allow client applications to use more generalized code in some situations (for instance, when manipulating objects that are all known to have names). If the object in question does not posess a 'name' attribute according to the SBML specification for the Level and Version in use, libSBML will not allow the name to be set, nor will it read or write 'name' attributes for those objects.

Returns: the name of this SBML object, or the empty string if not set or unsettable.

See also: getIdAttribute(); isSetName(); setName(); unsetName()

def libsbml.SBase.getNamespaces ( self )

Returns a list of the XML Namespaces declared on the SBML document owning this object.

getNamespaces()   XMLNamespaces

The SBMLNamespaces object encapsulates SBML Level/Version/namespaces information. It is used to communicate the SBML Level, Version, and (in Level 3) packages used in addition to SBML Level 3 Core.

Returns: the XML Namespaces associated with this SBML object, or None in certain very usual circumstances where a namespace is not set.

See also: getLevel(); getVersion()

def libsbml.SBase.getNotes	(	self,
		args
	)

Returns the content of the 'notes' subelement of this object as a tree of XMLNode objects.

getNotes()   XMLNode

: The optional SBML element named 'notes', present on every major SBML component type (and in SBML Level 3, the 'message' subelement of Constraint), is intended as a place for storing optional information intended to be seen by humans. An example use of the 'notes' element would be to contain formatted user comments about the model element in which the 'notes' element is enclosed. Every object derived directly or indirectly from type SBase can have a separate value for 'notes', allowing users considerable freedom when adding comments to their models.

The format of 'notes' elements conform to the definition of XHTML 1.0. However, the content cannot be entirely free-form; it must satisfy certain requirements defined in the SBML specifications for specific SBML Levels. To help verify the formatting of 'notes' content, libSBML provides the static utility method SyntaxChecker.hasExpectedXHTMLSyntax(); this method implements a verification process that lets callers check whether the content of a given XMLNode object conforms to the SBML requirements for 'notes' and 'message' structure. Developers are urged to consult the appropriate SBML specification document for the Level and Version of their model for more in-depth explanations of using 'notes' in SBML. The SBML Level 2 and 3 specifications have considerable detail about how 'notes' element content must be structured.

The 'notes' element content returned by this method will be in XML form, but libSBML does not provide an object model specifically for the content of notes. Callers will need to traverse the XML tree structure using the facilities available on XMLNode and related objects. For an alternative method of accessing the notes, see getNotesString().

Returns: the content of the 'notes' subelement of this SBML object as a tree structure composed of XMLNode objects.

See also: getNotesString(); isSetNotes(); setNotes(); setNotes(); appendNotes(); appendNotes(); unsetNotes(); SyntaxChecker.hasExpectedXHTMLSyntax()

def libsbml.SBase.getNotesString	(	self,
		args
	)

Returns the content of the 'notes' subelement of this object as a string.

getNotesString()   string

: The optional SBML element named 'notes', present on every major SBML component type (and in SBML Level 3, the 'message' subelement of Constraint), is intended as a place for storing optional information intended to be seen by humans. An example use of the 'notes' element would be to contain formatted user comments about the model element in which the 'notes' element is enclosed. Every object derived directly or indirectly from type SBase can have a separate value for 'notes', allowing users considerable freedom when adding comments to their models.

The format of 'notes' elements conform to the definition of XHTML 1.0. However, the content cannot be entirely free-form; it must satisfy certain requirements defined in the SBML specifications for specific SBML Levels. To help verify the formatting of 'notes' content, libSBML provides the static utility method SyntaxChecker.hasExpectedXHTMLSyntax(); this method implements a verification process that lets callers check whether the content of a given XMLNode object conforms to the SBML requirements for 'notes' and 'message' structure. Developers are urged to consult the appropriate SBML specification document for the Level and Version of their model for more in-depth explanations of using 'notes' in SBML. The SBML Level 2 and 3 specifications have considerable detail about how 'notes' element content must be structured.

For an alternative method of accessing the notes, see getNotes(), which returns the content as an XMLNode tree structure. Depending on an application's needs, one or the other method may be more convenient.

Returns: the content of the 'notes' subelement of this SBML object as a string.

See also: getNotes(); isSetNotes(); setNotes(); setNotes(); appendNotes(); appendNotes(); unsetNotes(); SyntaxChecker.hasExpectedXHTMLSyntax()

def libsbml.SBase.getNumCVTerms ( self )

Returns the number of CVTerm objects in the annotations of this SBML object.

getNumCVTerms()   long

Returns: the number of CVTerms for this SBML object.

def libsbml.SBase.getNumDisabledPlugins ( self )

Returns the number of disabled plug-in objects (extension interfaces) for SBML Level 3 package extensions known.

getNumDisabledPlugins()   long

: SBML Level 3 consists of a Core definition that can be extended via optional SBML Level 3 packages. A given model may indicate that it uses one or more SBML packages, and likewise, a software tool may be able to support one or more packages. LibSBML does not come preconfigured with all possible packages included and enabled, in part because not all package specifications have been finalized. To support the ability for software systems to enable support for the Level 3 packages they choose, libSBML features a plug-in mechanism. Each SBML Level 3 package is implemented in a separate code plug-in that can be enabled by the application to support working with that SBML package. A given SBML model may thus contain not only objects defined by SBML Level 3 Core, but also objects created by libSBML plug-ins supporting additional Level 3 packages.

: If a plugin is disabled, the package information it contains is no longer considered to be part of the SBML document for the purposes of searching the document or writing out the document. However, the information is still retained, so if the plugin is enabled again, the same information will once again be available, and will be written out to the final model.

Returns: the number of disabled plug-in objects (extension interfaces) of package extensions known by this instance of libSBML.

def libsbml.SBase.getNumPlugins ( self )

Returns the number of plug-in objects (extenstion interfaces) for SBML Level 3 package extensions known.

getNumPlugins()   long

: SBML Level 3 consists of a Core definition that can be extended via optional SBML Level 3 packages. A given model may indicate that it uses one or more SBML packages, and likewise, a software tool may be able to support one or more packages. LibSBML does not come preconfigured with all possible packages included and enabled, in part because not all package specifications have been finalized. To support the ability for software systems to enable support for the Level 3 packages they choose, libSBML features a plug-in mechanism. Each SBML Level 3 package is implemented in a separate code plug-in that can be enabled by the application to support working with that SBML package. A given SBML model may thus contain not only objects defined by SBML Level 3 Core, but also objects created by libSBML plug-ins supporting additional Level 3 packages.

Returns: the number of plug-in objects (extension interfaces) of package extensions known by this instance of libSBML.

See also: getPlugin()

def libsbml.SBase.getPackageCoreVersion ( self )

Returns the SBML Core Version within the SBML Level of the actual object.

getPackageCoreVersion()   long

: LibSBML uses the class SBMLDocument as a top-level container for storing SBML content and data associated with it (such as warnings and error messages). An SBML model in libSBML is contained inside an SBMLDocument object. SBMLDocument corresponds roughly to the class SBML defined in the SBML Level 3 and Level 2 specifications, but it does not have a direct correspondence in SBML Level 1. (But, it is created by libSBML no matter whether the model is Level 1, Level 2 or Level 3.)

Returns: the SBML core version of this SBML object.

def libsbml.SBase.getPackageName ( self )

Returns the name of the SBML Level 3 package in which this element is defined.

getPackageName()   string

Returns: the name of the SBML package in which this element is defined. The string "core" will be returned if this element is defined in SBML Level 3 Core. The string "unknown" will be returned if this element is not defined in any SBML package.

def libsbml.SBase.getPackageVersion ( self )

Returns the Version of the SBML Level 3 package to which this element belongs to.

getPackageVersion()   long

Returns: the version of the SBML Level 3 package to which this element belongs. The value 0 will be returned if this element belongs to the SBML Level 3 Core package.

See also: getLevel(); getVersion()

def libsbml.SBase.getParentSBMLObject	(	self,
		args
	)

Returns the parent SBML object containing this object.

getParentSBMLObject()   SBase

This returns the immediately-containing object. This method is convenient when holding an object nested inside other objects in an SBML model.

Returns: the parent SBML object of this SBML object.

See also: getSBMLDocument(); getModel()

def libsbml.SBase.getPlugin	(	self,
		args
	)

This method has multiple variants; they differ in the arguments they accept.

getPlugin(string package)   SBasePlugin
getPlugin(long  n)   SBasePlugin

Each variant is described separately below.

Method variant with the following signature:

getPlugin(long n)

Returns the nth plug-in object (extension interface) for an SBML Level 3 package extension. The returned plug-in will be the appropriate type of plugin requested: calling Model.getPlugin() will return an FbcModelPlugin; calling Parameter.getPlugin() will return CompSBasePlugin, etc.

If no such plugin exists, None is returned.

: SBML Level 3 consists of a Core definition that can be extended via optional SBML Level 3 packages. A given model may indicate that it uses one or more SBML packages, and likewise, a software tool may be able to support one or more packages. LibSBML does not come preconfigured with all possible packages included and enabled, in part because not all package specifications have been finalized. To support the ability for software systems to enable support for the Level 3 packages they choose, libSBML features a plug-in mechanism. Each SBML Level 3 package is implemented in a separate code plug-in that can be enabled by the application to support working with that SBML package. A given SBML model may thus contain not only objects defined by SBML Level 3 Core, but also objects created by libSBML plug-ins supporting additional Level 3 packages.

Parameters

n	the index of the plug-in to return.

Returns: the nth plug-in object (the libSBML extension interface) of a package extension. If the index n is invalid, None is returned.

See also: getNumPlugins(); getPlugin()

Method variant with the following signature:

getPlugin(string package)

Returns a plug-in object (extension interface) for an SBML Level 3 package extension with the given package name or URI. The returned plug-in will be the appropriate type of plugin requested: calling Model.getPlugin() will return an FbcModelPlugin; calling Parameter.getPlugin() will return CompSBasePlugin, etc.

If no such plugin exists, None is returned.

: SBML Level 3 consists of a Core definition that can be extended via optional SBML Level 3 packages. A given model may indicate that it uses one or more SBML packages, and likewise, a software tool may be able to support one or more packages. LibSBML does not come preconfigured with all possible packages included and enabled, in part because not all package specifications have been finalized. To support the ability for software systems to enable support for the Level 3 packages they choose, libSBML features a plug-in mechanism. Each SBML Level 3 package is implemented in a separate code plug-in that can be enabled by the application to support working with that SBML package. A given SBML model may thus contain not only objects defined by SBML Level 3 Core, but also objects created by libSBML plug-ins supporting additional Level 3 packages.

Parameters

package the name or URI of the package.

Returns: the plug-in object (the libSBML extension interface) of a package extension with the given package name or URI.

See also: getPlugin()

def libsbml.SBase.getPrefix ( self )

Returns the XML namespace prefix of this element.

getPrefix()   string

This reports the XML namespace prefix chosen for this class of object in the current SBML document. This may be an empty string if the component has no explicit prefix (for instance, if it is a core SBML object placed in the default SBML namespace of the document). If it is not empty, then it corresponds to the XML namespace prefix used set the object, whatever that may be in a given SBML document.

Returns: a text string representing the XML namespace prefix.

def libsbml.SBase.getResourceBiologicalQualifier	(	self,
		resource
	)

Returns the MIRIAM biological qualifier associated with the given resource.

getResourceBiologicalQualifier(string resource)   long

In MIRIAM, qualifiers are an optional means of indicating the relationship between a model component and its annotations. There are two broad kinds of annotations: model and biological. The latter kind is used to qualify the relationship between a model component and a biological entity which it represents. Examples of relationships include 'is' and 'has part', but many others are possible. MIRIAM defines numerous relationship qualifiers to enable different software tools to qualify biological annotations in the same standardized way. In libSBML, the MIRIAM controlled-vocabulary annotations on an SBML model element are represented using lists of CVTerm objects, and the the MIRIAM biological qualifiers are represented using valueswhose names begin with BQB_ in the interface class libsbml.

This method searches the controlled-vocabulary annotations (i.e., the list of CVTerm objects) on the present object, then out of those that have biological qualifiers, looks for an annotation to the given resource. If such an annotation is found, it returns the type of biological qualifier associated with that resource as a valuewhose name begins with BQB_ from the interface class libsbml.

Parameters

resource string representing the resource; e.g., 'http://www.geneontology.org/#GO:0005892'.

Returns: the qualifier associated with the resource, or BQB_UNKNOWN if the resource does not exist.

Note: The set of MIRIAM biological qualifiers grows over time, although relatively slowly. The values are up to date with MIRIAM at the time of a given libSBML release. The set of values in list of BQB_ constants defined in libsbml may be expanded in later libSBML releases, to match the values defined by MIRIAM at that later time.

def libsbml.SBase.getResourceModelQualifier	(	self,
		resource
	)

Returns the MIRIAM model qualifier associated with the given resource.

getResourceModelQualifier(string resource)   long

In MIRIAM, qualifiers are an optional means of indicating the relationship between a model component and its annotations. There are two broad kinds of annotations: model and biological. The former kind is used to qualify the relationship between a model component and another modeling object. An example qualifier is 'isDerivedFrom', to indicate that a given component of the model is derived from the modeling object represented by the referenced resource. MIRIAM defines numerous relationship qualifiers to enable different software tools to qualify model annotations in the same standardized way. In libSBML, the MIRIAM controlled-vocabulary annotations on an SBML model element are represented using lists of CVTerm objects, and the the MIRIAM model qualifiers are represented using valueswhose names begin with BQM_ in the interface class libsbml.

This method method searches the controlled-vocabulary annotations (i.e., the list of CVTerm objects) on the present object, then out of those that have model qualifiers, looks for an annotation to the given resource. If such an annotation is found, it returns the type of type of model qualifier associated with that resource as a valuewhose name begins with BQM_ from the interface class libsbml.

Parameters

resource string representing the resource; e.g., 'http://www.geneontology.org/#GO:0005892'.

Returns: the model qualifier type associated with the resource, or BQM_UNKNOWN if the resource does not exist.

Note: The set of MIRIAM model qualifiers grows over time, although relatively slowly. The values are up to date with MIRIAM at the time of a given libSBML release. The set of values in list of BQM_ constants defined in libsbml may be expanded in later libSBML releases, to match the values defined by MIRIAM at that later time.

def libsbml.SBase.getSBMLDocument	(	self,
		args
	)

Returns the SBMLDocument object containing this object instance.

getSBMLDocument()   SBMLDocument

: LibSBML uses the class SBMLDocument as a top-level container for storing SBML content and data associated with it (such as warnings and error messages). An SBML model in libSBML is contained inside an SBMLDocument object. SBMLDocument corresponds roughly to the class SBML defined in the SBML Level 3 and Level 2 specifications, but it does not have a direct correspondence in SBML Level 1. (But, it is created by libSBML no matter whether the model is Level 1, Level 2 or Level 3.)

This method allows the caller to obtain the SBMLDocument for the current object.

Returns: the parent SBMLDocument object of this SBML object.

See also: getParentSBMLObject(); getModel()

def libsbml.SBase.getSBOTerm ( self )

Returns the integer portion of the value of the 'sboTerm' attribute of this object.

getSBOTerm()   int

: Beginning with SBML Level 2 Version 2, objects derived from SBase have an optional attribute named 'sboTerm' for supporting the use of the Systems Biology Ontology. In SBML proper, the data type of the attribute is a string of the form 'SBO:NNNNNNN', where 'NNNNNNN' is a seven digit integer number; libSBML simplifies the representation by only storing the 'NNNNNNN' integer portion. Thus, in libSBML, the 'sboTerm' attribute on SBase has data type int, and SBO identifiers are stored simply as integers.

: SBO terms are a type of optional annotation, and each different class of SBML object derived from SBase imposes its own requirements about the values permitted for 'sboTerm'. More details can be found in SBML specifications for Level 2 Version 2 and above.

Returns: the value of the 'sboTerm' attribute as an integer, or -1 if the value is not set.

def libsbml.SBase.getSBOTermAsURL ( self )

Returns the URL representation of the 'sboTerm' attribute of this object.

getSBOTermAsURL()   string

This method returns the entire SBO identifier as a text string in the form http://identifiers.org/biomodels.sbo/SBO:NNNNNNN'.

: SBO terms are a type of optional annotation, and each different class of SBML object derived from SBase imposes its own requirements about the values permitted for 'sboTerm'. More details can be found in SBML specifications for Level 2 Version 2 and above.

Returns: the value of the 'sboTerm' attribute as an identifiers.org URL, or an empty string if the value is not set.

def libsbml.SBase.getSBOTermID ( self )

Returns the string representation of the 'sboTerm' attribute of this object.

getSBOTermID()   string

: Beginning with SBML Level 2 Version 2, objects derived from SBase have an optional attribute named 'sboTerm' for supporting the use of the Systems Biology Ontology. In SBML proper, the data type of the attribute is a string of the form 'SBO:NNNNNNN', where 'NNNNNNN' is a seven digit integer number; libSBML simplifies the representation by only storing the 'NNNNNNN' integer portion. Thus, in libSBML, the 'sboTerm' attribute on SBase has data type int, and SBO identifiers are stored simply as integers.

: SBO terms are a type of optional annotation, and each different class of SBML object derived from SBase imposes its own requirements about the values permitted for 'sboTerm'. More details can be found in SBML specifications for Level 2 Version 2 and above.

Returns: the value of the 'sboTerm' attribute as a string (its value will be of the form 'SBO:NNNNNNN'), or an empty string if the value is not set.

def libsbml.SBase.getTypeCode ( self )

Returns the libSBML type code for this object.

getTypeCode()   int

: LibSBML attaches an identifying code to every kind of SBML object. These are integer constants known as SBML type codes. The names of all the codes begin with the characters SBML_. In the Python language interface for libSBML, the type codes are defined as static integer constants in the interface class libsbml. Note that different Level 3 package plug-ins may use overlapping type codes; to identify the package to which a given object belongs, call the SBase.getPackageName() method on the object.

The exception to this is lists: all SBML-style list elements have the type SBML_LIST_OF, regardless of what package they are from.

: Here follow some additional general information about libSBML type codes:

The codes are the possible return values (integers) for the following functions:
- SBase.getTypeCode()
- ListOf.getItemTypeCode()
(Compatibility note: in libSBML 5, the type of return values of these functions changed from an enumeration to an integer for extensibility in the face of different programming languages.)

Each package extension must define similar sets of values for each SBase subclass (e.g. long for the SBML Level 3 Layout extension, long for the SBML Level 3 Flux Balance Constraints extension, etc.).

The value of each package-specific type code can be duplicated between those of different packages. (This is necessary because the development of libSBML extensions for different SBML packages may be undertaken by different developers at different times; requiring the developers to coordinate their use of type codes would be nettlesome and probably doomed to failure.)

To distinguish between the type codes of different packages, both the return value of SBase.getTypeCode() and SBase.getPackageName() must be checked. This is particularly important for functions that take an SBML type code as an argument, such as SBase.getAncestorOfType(), which by default assumes you are handing it a core type, and will return None if the value you give it is actually from a package.

The following example code illustrates the combined use of SBase.getPackageName() and SBase.getTypeCode():

 def example(item):
   pkg_name  = item.getPackageName()
   type_code = item.getTypeCode()
   if pkg_name == 'core':
     print('Got a ' + SBMLTypeCode_toString(type_code, 'core') + ' object')
     if type_code == SBML_MODEL:
       print('This is a very, very nice model')
       # Do whatever the application wants to do with the model.
     elif type_code == SBML_COMPARTMENT:
       print('This is a very, very nice compartment')
       # Do whatever the application wants to do with the compartment.
     elif type_code == SBML_SPECIES:
       print('This is a very, very nice species')
       # Do whatever the application wants to do with the species.
     elif ...
       ...
   elif pkg_name == 'layout':
     print('Got a ' + SBMLTypeCode_toString(type_code, 'layout') + ' object')
     if type_code == SBML_LAYOUT_POINT:
       print('This is a very, very nice layout point')
       # Do whatever the application wants to do with the layout point.
     elif type_code == SBML_LAYOUT_BOUNDINGBOX:
       print('This is a very, very nice layout bounding box')
       # Do whatever the application wants to do with the layout bounding box.
     elif ...
       ...
   elif pkg_name == 'unknown':
     print('Something went wrong -- libSBML did not recognize the object type')
     # Handle errors

Returns: the SBML object type code of this SBML object, or SBML_UNKNOWN (the default). The latter is possible because subclasses of SBase are not required to implement this method to return a type code.

Warning: The specific integer values of the possible type codes may be reused by different libSBML plug-ins for SBML Level 3. packages, To fully identify the correct code, it is necessary to invoke both getPackageName() and getTypeCode() (or ListOf.getItemTypeCode()).

See also: getPackageName(); getElementName()

def libsbml.SBase.getURI ( self )

Gets the namespace URI to which this element belongs to.

getURI()   string

For example, all elements that belong to SBML Level 3 Version 1 Core must would have the URI 'http://www.sbml.org/sbml/level3/version1/core'; all elements that belong to Layout Extension Version 1 for SBML Level 3 Version 1 Core must would have the URI 'http://www.sbml.org/sbml/level3/version1/layout/version1'.

This function first returns the URI for this element by looking into the SBMLNamespaces object of the document with the its package name. If not found, it will then look for the namespace associated with the element itself.

Returns: the URI of this element, as a text string.

See also: getSBMLDocument(); getPackageName()

def libsbml.SBase.getVersion ( self )

Returns the Version within the SBML Level of the SBMLDocument object containing this object.

getVersion()   long

: LibSBML uses the class SBMLDocument as a top-level container for storing SBML content and data associated with it (such as warnings and error messages). An SBML model in libSBML is contained inside an SBMLDocument object. SBMLDocument corresponds roughly to the class SBML defined in the SBML Level 3 and Level 2 specifications, but it does not have a direct correspondence in SBML Level 1. (But, it is created by libSBML no matter whether the model is Level 1, Level 2 or Level 3.)

Returns: the SBML version of this SBML object.

See also: getLevel(); getNamespaces()

def libsbml.SBase.hasValidLevelVersionNamespaceCombination ( self )

Predicate returning true if this object's level/version and namespace values correspond to a valid SBML specification.

hasValidLevelVersionNamespaceCombination()   bool

The valid combinations of SBML Level, Version and Namespace as of this release of libSBML are the following:

Level 1 Version 2: http://www.sbml.org/sbml/level1
Level 2 Version 1: http://www.sbml.org/sbml/level2
Level 2 Version 2: http://www.sbml.org/sbml/level2/version2
Level 2 Version 3: http://www.sbml.org/sbml/level2/version3
Level 2 Version 4: http://www.sbml.org/sbml/level2/version4
Level 3 Version 1 Core: http://www.sbml.org/sbml/level3/version1/core

Returns: true if the level, version and namespace values of this SBML object correspond to a valid set of values, false otherwise.

def libsbml.SBase.isPackageEnabled	(	self,
		pkgName
	)

Predicate returning True if the given SBML Level 3 package is enabled with this object.

isPackageEnabled(string pkgName)   bool

The search ignores the package version.

Parameters

pkgName the name of the package.

Returns: True if the given package is enabled within this object, False otherwise.

See also: isPackageURIEnabled()

def libsbml.SBase.isPackageURIEnabled	(	self,
		pkgURI
	)

Predicate returning True if an SBML Level 3 package with the given URI is enabled with this object.

isPackageURIEnabled(string pkgURI)   bool

Parameters

pkgURI the URI of the package.

Returns: True if the given package is enabled within this object, False otherwise.

See also: isPackageEnabled()

def libsbml.SBase.isPkgEnabled	(	self,
		pkgName
	)

Predicate returning True if the given SBML Level 3 package is enabled with this object.

isPkgEnabled(string pkgName)   bool

The search ignores the package version.

Parameters

pkgName the name of the package.

Returns: True if the given package is enabled within this object, False otherwise.

See also: isPkgURIEnabled()

def libsbml.SBase.isPkgURIEnabled	(	self,
		pkgURI
	)

Predicate returning True if an SBML Level 3 package with the given URI is enabled with this object.

isPkgURIEnabled(string pkgURI)   bool

Parameters

pkgURI the URI of the package.

Returns: True if the given package is enabled within this object, False otherwise.

See also: isPkgEnabled()

def libsbml.SBase.isSetAnnotation ( self )

Predicate returning True if this object's 'annotation' subelement exists and has content.

isSetAnnotation()   bool

Whereas the SBase 'notes' subelement is a container for content to be shown directly to humans, the 'annotation' element is a container for optional software-generated content not meant to be shown to humans. Every object derived from SBase can have its own value for 'annotation'. The element's content type is XML type 'any', allowing essentially arbitrary well-formed XML data content.

SBML places a few restrictions on the organization of the content of annotations; these are intended to help software tools read and write the data as well as help reduce conflicts between annotations added by different tools. Please see the SBML specifications for more details.

Returns: True if a 'annotation' subelement exists, False otherwise.

See also: getAnnotation(); getAnnotationString(); setAnnotation(); setAnnotation(); appendAnnotation(); appendAnnotation(); unsetAnnotation()

def libsbml.SBase.isSetId ( self )

Predicate returning True if a call to getId() returns a non-empty string.

isSetId()   bool

For most objects, this function will return True if its 'id' attribute is set, and False if it is not, or if the object has no 'id' attribute at all. However, for an EventAssignment or a Rule, isSetId() checks whether the 'variable' attribute is set, and for an InitialAssignment, it checks whether the 'symbol' attribute is set. Because those elements will also have an 'id' attribute in SBML Level 3 Version 2 which isSetId() will not check, the function itself is deprecated, and it is recommended to use isSetIdAttribute() in all cases where one needs to know whether the 'id' attribute is set, and to use EventAssignment.isSetVariable(), Rule.isSetVariable() and InitialAssignment.isSetSymbol() when the status of the 'variable' or 'symbol' attributes need to be checked.

The identifier given by an object's 'id' attribute value is used to identify the object within the SBML model definition. Other objects can refer to the component using this identifier. The data type of 'id' is always SId or a type derived from that, such as UnitSId, depending on the object in question. All data types are defined as follows:

letter ::= 'a'..'z','A'..'Z'
digit  ::= '0'..'9'
idChar ::= letter | digit | '_'
SId    ::= ( letter | '_' ) idChar*

The characters ( and ) are used for grouping, the character * 'zero or more times', and the character | indicates logical 'or'. The equality of SBML identifiers is determined by an exact character sequence match; i.e., comparisons must be performed in a case-sensitive manner. This applies to all uses of SId, SIdRef, and derived types.

Users need to be aware of some important API issues that are the result of the history of SBML and libSBML. Prior to SBML Level 3 Version 2, SBML defined 'id' and 'name' attributes on only a subset of SBML objects. To simplify the work of programmers, libSBML's API provided get, set, check, and unset on the SBase object class itself instead of on individual subobject classes. This made the get/set/etc. methods uniformly available on all objects in the libSBML API. LibSBML simply returned empty strings or otherwise did not act when the methods were applied to SBML objects that were not defined by the SBML specification to have 'id' or 'name' attributes. Additional complications arose with the rule and assignment objects: InitialAssignment, EventAssignment, AssignmentRule, and RateRule. In early versions of SBML, the rule object hierarchy was different, and in addition, then as now, they possess different attributes: 'variable' (for the rules and event assignments), 'symbol' (for initial assignments), or neither (for algebraic rules). Prior to SBML Level 3 Version 2, getId() would always return an empty string, and isSetId() would always return False for objects of these classes.

With the addition of 'id' and 'name' attributes on SBase in Level 3 Version 2, it became necessary to introduce a new way to interact with the attributes more consistently in libSBML to avoid breaking backward compatibility in the behavior of the original 'id' methods. For this reason, libSBML provides four functions (getIdAttribute(), setIdAttribute(), isSetIdAttribute(), and unsetIdAttribute()) that always act on the actual 'id' attribute inherited from SBase, regardless of the object's type. These new methods should be used instead of the older getId()/setId()/etc. methods unless the old behavior is somehow necessary. Regardless of the Level and Version of the SBML, these functions allow client applications to use more generalized code in some situations (for instance, when manipulating objects that are all known to have identifiers). If the object in question does not posess an 'id' attribute according to the SBML specification for the Level and Version in use, libSBML will not allow the identifier to be set, nor will it read or write 'id' attributes for those objects.

Returns: True if the 'id' attribute of this SBML object is set, False otherwise.

Note: Because of the inconsistent behavior of this function with respect to assignments and rules, it is recommended that callers use isSetIdAttribute() instead.

See also: getIdAttribute(); setIdAttribute(); unsetIdAttribute(); isSetIdAttribute()

def libsbml.SBase.isSetIdAttribute ( self )

Predicate returning True if this object's 'id' attribute is set.

isSetIdAttribute()   bool

The identifier given by an object's 'id' attribute value is used to identify the object within the SBML model definition. Other objects can refer to the component using this identifier. The data type of 'id' is always SId or a type derived from that, such as UnitSId, depending on the object in question. All data types are defined as follows:

letter ::= 'a'..'z','A'..'Z'
digit  ::= '0'..'9'
idChar ::= letter | digit | '_'
SId    ::= ( letter | '_' ) idChar*

The characters ( and ) are used for grouping, the character * 'zero or more times', and the character | indicates logical 'or'. The equality of SBML identifiers is determined by an exact character sequence match; i.e., comparisons must be performed in a case-sensitive manner. This applies to all uses of SId, SIdRef, and derived types.

Users need to be aware of some important API issues that are the result of the history of SBML and libSBML. Prior to SBML Level 3 Version 2, SBML defined 'id' and 'name' attributes on only a subset of SBML objects. To simplify the work of programmers, libSBML's API provided get, set, check, and unset on the SBase object class itself instead of on individual subobject classes. This made the get/set/etc. methods uniformly available on all objects in the libSBML API. LibSBML simply returned empty strings or otherwise did not act when the methods were applied to SBML objects that were not defined by the SBML specification to have 'id' or 'name' attributes. Additional complications arose with the rule and assignment objects: InitialAssignment, EventAssignment, AssignmentRule, and RateRule. In early versions of SBML, the rule object hierarchy was different, and in addition, then as now, they possess different attributes: 'variable' (for the rules and event assignments), 'symbol' (for initial assignments), or neither (for algebraic rules). Prior to SBML Level 3 Version 2, getId() would always return an empty string, and isSetId() would always return False for objects of these classes.

With the addition of 'id' and 'name' attributes on SBase in Level 3 Version 2, it became necessary to introduce a new way to interact with the attributes more consistently in libSBML to avoid breaking backward compatibility in the behavior of the original 'id' methods. For this reason, libSBML provides four functions (getIdAttribute(), setIdAttribute(), isSetIdAttribute(), and unsetIdAttribute()) that always act on the actual 'id' attribute inherited from SBase, regardless of the object's type. These new methods should be used instead of the older getId()/setId()/etc. methods unless the old behavior is somehow necessary. Regardless of the Level and Version of the SBML, these functions allow client applications to use more generalized code in some situations (for instance, when manipulating objects that are all known to have identifiers). If the object in question does not posess an 'id' attribute according to the SBML specification for the Level and Version in use, libSBML will not allow the identifier to be set, nor will it read or write 'id' attributes for those objects.

Returns: True if the 'id' attribute of this SBML object is set, False otherwise.

See also: getIdAttribute(); setIdAttribute(); unsetIdAttribute()

def libsbml.SBase.isSetMetaId ( self )

Predicate returning True if this object's 'metaid' attribute is set.

isSetMetaId()   bool

: The optional attribute named 'metaid', present on every major SBML component type, is for supporting metadata annotations using RDF (Resource Description Format). The attribute value has the data type XML ID, the XML identifier type, which means each 'metaid' value must be globally unique within an SBML file. The latter point is important, because the uniqueness criterion applies across any attribute with type ID anywhere in the file, not just the 'metaid' attribute used by SBML—something to be aware of if your application-specific XML content inside the 'annotation' subelement happens to use the XML ID type. Although SBML itself specifies the use of XML ID only for the 'metaid' attribute, SBML-compatible applications should be careful if they use XML ID's in XML portions of a model that are not defined by SBML, such as in the application-specific content of the 'annotation' subelement. Finally, note that LibSBML does not provide an explicit XML ID data type; it uses ordinary character strings, which is easier for applications to support.

Returns: True if the 'metaid' attribute of this SBML object is set, False otherwise.

See also: getMetaId(); setMetaId()

def libsbml.SBase.isSetModelHistory ( self )

Predicate returning True if this object has a ModelHistory object attached to it.

isSetModelHistory()   bool

Returns: True if the ModelHistory of this object is set, False otherwise.

Note: In SBML Level 2, model history annotations were only permitted on the Model element. In SBML Level 3, they are permitted on all SBML components derived from SBase.

def libsbml.SBase.isSetName ( self )

Predicate returning True if this object's 'name' attribute is set.

isSetName()   bool

: In SBML Level 3 Version 2, the 'id' and 'name' attributes were moved to SBase directly, instead of being defined individually for many (but not all) objects. LibSBML has for a long time provided functions defined on SBase itself to get, set, and unset those attributes, which would fail or otherwise return empty strings if executed on any object for which those attributes were not defined. Now that all SBase objects define those attributes, those functions now succeed for any object with the appropriate level and version.

The 'name' attribute is optional and is not intended to be used for cross-referencing purposes within a model. Its purpose instead is to provide a human-readable label for the component. The data type of 'name' is the type string defined in XML Schema. SBML imposes no restrictions as to the content of 'name' attributes beyond those restrictions defined by the string type in XML Schema.

The recommended practice for handling 'name' is as follows. If a software tool has the capability for displaying the content of 'name' attributes, it should display this content to the user as a component's label instead of the component's 'id'. If the user interface does not have this capability (e.g., because it cannot display or use special characters in symbol names), or if the 'name' attribute is missing on a given component, then the user interface should display the value of the 'id' attribute instead. (Script language interpreters are especially likely to display 'id' instead of 'name'.)

As a consequence of the above, authors of systems that automatically generate the values of 'id' attributes should be aware some systems may display the 'id''s to the user. Authors therefore may wish to take some care to have their software create 'id' values that are: (a) reasonably easy for humans to type and read; and (b) likely to be meaningful, for example by making the 'id' attribute be an abbreviated form of the name attribute value.

An additional point worth mentioning is although there are restrictions on the uniqueness of 'id' values, there are no restrictions on the uniqueness of 'name' values in a model. This allows software applications leeway in assigning component identifiers.

Regardless of the level and version of the SBML, these functions allow client applications to use more generalized code in some situations (for instance, when manipulating objects that are all known to have names). If the object in question does not posess a 'name' attribute according to the SBML specification for the Level and Version in use, libSBML will not allow the name to be set, nor will it read or write 'name' attributes for those objects.

Returns: True if the 'name' attribute of this SBML object is set, False otherwise.

See also: getName(); setName(); unsetName()

def libsbml.SBase.isSetNotes ( self )

Predicate returning True if this object's 'notes' subelement exists and has content.

isSetNotes()   bool

The optional SBML element named 'notes', present on every major SBML component type, is intended as a place for storing optional information intended to be seen by humans. An example use of the 'notes' element would be to contain formatted user comments about the model element in which the 'notes' element is enclosed. Every object derived directly or indirectly from type SBase can have a separate value for 'notes', allowing users considerable freedom when adding comments to their models.

The format of 'notes' elements must be XHTML 1.0. To help verify the formatting of 'notes' content, libSBML provides the static utility method SyntaxChecker.hasExpectedXHTMLSyntax(); however, readers are urged to consult the appropriate SBML specification document for the Level and Version of their model for more in-depth explanations. The SBML Level 2 and 3 specifications have considerable detail about how 'notes' element content must be structured.

Returns: True if a 'notes' subelement exists, False otherwise.

See also: getNotes(); getNotesString(); setNotes(); setNotes(); appendNotes(); appendNotes(); unsetNotes(); SyntaxChecker.hasExpectedXHTMLSyntax()

def libsbml.SBase.isSetSBOTerm ( self )

Predicate returning True if this object's 'sboTerm' attribute is set.

isSetSBOTerm()   bool

Returns: True if the 'sboTerm' attribute of this SBML object is set, False otherwise.

def libsbml.SBase.isSetUserData ( self )

Predicate returning true or false depending on whether the user data of this element has been set.

isSetUserData()   bool

: The user data associated with an SBML object can be used by an application developer to attach custom information to that object in the model. In case of a deep copy, this data will passed as-is. The data attribute will never be interpreted by libSBML.

Returns: boolean, True if this object's user data has been set, False otherwise.

def libsbml.SBase.matchesRequiredSBMLNamespacesForAddition	(	self,
		args
	)

Returns True if this object's set of XML namespaces are a subset of the given object's XML namespaces.

matchesRequiredSBMLNamespacesForAddition(SBase sb)   bool

: The SBMLNamespaces object encapsulates SBML Level/Version/namespaces information. It is used to communicate the SBML Level, Version, and (in Level 3) packages used in addition to SBML Level 3 Core. A common approach to using libSBML's SBMLNamespaces facilities is to create an SBMLNamespaces object somewhere in a program once, then hand that object as needed to object constructors that accept SBMLNamespaces as arguments.

Parameters

sb	an object to compare with respect to namespaces.

Returns: boolean, True if this object's collection of namespaces is a subset of sb's, False otherwise.

def libsbml.SBase.matchesSBMLNamespaces	(	self,
		args
	)

Returns True if this object's set of XML namespaces are the same as the given object's XML namespaces.

matchesSBMLNamespaces(SBase sb)   bool

: The SBMLNamespaces object encapsulates SBML Level/Version/namespaces information. It is used to communicate the SBML Level, Version, and (in Level 3) packages used in addition to SBML Level 3 Core. A common approach to using libSBML's SBMLNamespaces facilities is to create an SBMLNamespaces object somewhere in a program once, then hand that object as needed to object constructors that accept SBMLNamespaces as arguments.

Parameters

sb	an object to compare with respect to namespaces.

Returns: boolean, True if this object's collection of namespaces is the same as sb's, False otherwise.

def libsbml.SBase.removeFromParentAndDelete ( self )

Removes this object from its parent.

removeFromParentAndDelete()   int

If the parent was storing this object as a pointer, it is deleted. If not, it is simply cleared (as in ListOf objects). This is a pure virtual method, as every SBase element has different parents, and therefore different methods of removing itself. Will fail (and not delete itself) if it has no parent object. This function is designed to be overridden, but for all objects whose parent is of the class ListOf, the default implementation will work.

Returns

integer value indicating success/failure of the function. The possible values returned by this function are:

def libsbml.SBase.removeTopLevelAnnotationElement	(	self,
		args
	)

Removes the top-level element within the 'annotation' subelement of this SBML object with the given name and optional URI.

removeTopLevelAnnotationElement(string elementName, string elementURI, bool removeEmpty)   int
removeTopLevelAnnotationElement(string elementName, string elementURI)   int
removeTopLevelAnnotationElement(string elementName)   int

SBML places a few restrictions on the organization of the content of annotations; these are intended to help software tools read and write the data as well as help reduce conflicts between annotations added by different tools. Please see the SBML specifications for more details.

Calling this method allows a particular annotation element to be removed whilst the remaining annotations remain intact.

Parameters

elementName	a string representing the name of the top level annotation element that is to be removed.
elementURI	an optional string that is used to check both the name and URI of the top level element to be removed.
removeEmpty	if after removing of the element, the annotation is empty, and the removeEmpty argument is true, the annotation node will be deleted (default).

Returns

integer value indicating success/failure of the function. The possible values returned by this function are:

See also: replaceTopLevelAnnotationElement(); replaceTopLevelAnnotationElement()

Note: Owing to the way that language interfaces are created in libSBML, this documentation may show methods that define default values for parameters with text that has the form 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.SBase.renameMetaIdRefs	(	self,
		oldid,
		newid
	)

Replaces all uses of a given meta identifier attribute value with another value.

renameMetaIdRefs(string oldid, string newid)

: In SBML, object 'meta' identifiers are of the XML data type ID; the SBML object attribute itself is typically named metaid. All attributes that hold values referring to values of type ID are of the XML data type IDREF. They are also sometimes informally referred to as 'metaid refs', in analogy to the SBML-defined type SIdRef.

This method works by looking at all meta-identifier attribute values, comparing the identifiers to the value of oldid. If any matches are found, the matching identifiers are replaced with newid. The method does not descend into child elements.

Parameters

oldid	the old identifier.
newid	the new identifier.

def libsbml.SBase.renameSIdRefs	(	self,
		oldid,
		newid
	)

Replaces all uses of a given SIdRef type attribute value with another value.

renameSIdRefs(string oldid, string newid)

: In SBML, object identifiers are of a data type called SId. In SBML Level 3, an explicit data type called SIdRef was introduced for attribute values that refer to SId values; in previous Levels of SBML, this data type did not exist and attributes were simply described to as 'referring to an identifier', but the effective data type was the same as SIdRef in Level 3. These and other methods of libSBML refer to the type SIdRef for all Levels of SBML, even if the corresponding SBML specification did not explicitly name the data type.

This method works by looking at all attributes and (if appropriate) mathematical formulas in MathML content, comparing the referenced identifiers to the value of oldid. If any matches are found, the matching values are replaced with newid. The method does not descend into child elements.

Parameters

oldid	the old identifier.
newid	the new identifier.

def libsbml.SBase.renameUnitSIdRefs	(	self,
		oldid,
		newid
	)

Replaces all uses of a given UnitSIdRef type attribute value with another value.

renameUnitSIdRefs(string oldid, string newid)

: In SBML, unit definitions have identifiers of type UnitSId. In SBML Level 3, an explicit data type called UnitSIdRef was introduced for attribute values that refer to UnitSId values; in previous Levels of SBML, this data type did not exist and attributes were simply described to as 'referring to a unit identifier', but the effective data type was the same as UnitSIdRef in Level 3. These and other methods of libSBML refer to the type UnitSIdRef for all Levels of SBML, even if the corresponding SBML specification did not explicitly name the data type.

This method works by looking at all unit identifier attribute values (including, if appropriate, inside mathematical formulas), comparing the referenced unit identifiers to the value of oldid. If any matches are found, the matching values are replaced with newid. The method does not descend into child elements.

Parameters

oldid	the old identifier.
newid	the new identifier.

def libsbml.SBase.replaceTopLevelAnnotationElement	(	self,
		args
	)

This method has multiple variants; they differ in the arguments they accept.

replaceTopLevelAnnotationElement(XMLNode annotation)   int
replaceTopLevelAnnotationElement(string annotation)   int

Each variant is described separately below.

Method variant with the following signature:

replaceTopLevelAnnotationElement(XMLNode annotation)

Replaces the given top-level element within the 'annotation' subelement of this SBML object and with the annotation element supplied.

SBML places a few restrictions on the organization of the content of annotations; these are intended to help software tools read and write the data as well as help reduce conflicts between annotations added by different tools. Please see the SBML specifications for more details.

This method determines the name of the element to be replaced from the annotation argument. Functionally it is equivalent to calling removeTopLevelAnnotationElement(name) followed by calling appendAnnotation(annotation_with_name), with the exception that the placement of the annotation element remains the same.

Parameters

annotation XMLNode representing the replacement top level annotation.

Returns

integer value indicating success/failure of the function. The possible values returned by this function are:

See also: removeTopLevelAnnotationElement(); replaceTopLevelAnnotationElement()

Method variant with the following signature:

replaceTopLevelAnnotationElement(string annotation)

Replaces the given top-level element within the 'annotation' subelement of this SBML object and with the annotation element supplied.

SBML places a few restrictions on the organization of the content of annotations; these are intended to help software tools read and write the data as well as help reduce conflicts between annotations added by different tools. Please see the SBML specifications for more details.

This method determines the name of the element to be replaced from the annotation argument. Functionally it is equivalent to calling removeTopLevelAnnotationElement(name) followed by calling appendAnnotation(annotation_with_name), with the exception that the placement of the annotation element remains the same.

Parameters

annotation string representing the replacement top level annotation.

Returns

integer value indicating success/failure of the function. The possible values returned by this function are:

See also: removeTopLevelAnnotationElement(); replaceTopLevelAnnotationElement()

def libsbml.SBase.setAnnotation	(	self,
		args
	)

This method has multiple variants; they differ in the arguments they accept.

setAnnotation(XMLNode annotation)   int
setAnnotation(string annotation)   int

Each variant is described separately below.

Method variant with the following signature:

setAnnotation(XMLNode annotation)

Sets the value of the 'annotation' subelement of this SBML object.

The content of annotation is copied, and any previous content of this object's 'annotation' subelement is deleted.

Whereas the SBase 'notes' subelement is a container for content to be shown directly to humans, the 'annotation' element is a container for optional software-generated content not meant to be shown to humans. Every object derived from SBase can have its own value for 'annotation'. The element's content type is XML type 'any', allowing essentially arbitrary well-formed XML data content.

SBML places a few restrictions on the organization of the content of annotations; these are intended to help software tools read and write the data as well as help reduce conflicts between annotations added by different tools. Please see the SBML specifications for more details.

Call this method will result in any existing content of the 'annotation' subelement to be discarded. Unless you have taken steps to first copy and reconstitute any existing annotations into the annotation that is about to be assigned, it is likely that performing such wholesale replacement is unfriendly towards other software applications whose annotations are discarded. An alternative may be to use SBase.appendAnnotation() or SBase.appendAnnotation().

Parameters

annotation an XML structure that is to be used as the new content of the 'annotation' subelement of this object.

Returns

integer value indicating success/failure of the function. This particular function only does one thing irrespective of user input or object state, and thus will only return a single value:

LIBSBML_OPERATION_SUCCESS

See also: getAnnotationString(); isSetAnnotation(); setAnnotation(); appendAnnotation(); appendAnnotation(); unsetAnnotation()

Method variant with the following signature:

setAnnotation(string annotation)

Sets the value of the 'annotation' subelement of this SBML object.

The content of annotation is copied, and any previous content of this object's 'annotation' subelement is deleted.

Whereas the SBase 'notes' subelement is a container for content to be shown directly to humans, the 'annotation' element is a container for optional software-generated content not meant to be shown to humans. Every object derived from SBase can have its own value for 'annotation'. The element's content type is XML type 'any', allowing essentially arbitrary well-formed XML data content.

SBML places a few restrictions on the organization of the content of annotations; these are intended to help software tools read and write the data as well as help reduce conflicts between annotations added by different tools. Please see the SBML specifications for more details.

Call this method will result in any existing content of the 'annotation' subelement to be discarded. Unless you have taken steps to first copy and reconstitute any existing annotations into the annotation that is about to be assigned, it is likely that performing such wholesale replacement is unfriendly towards other software applications whose annotations are discarded. An alternative may be to use SBase.appendAnnotation() or SBase.appendAnnotation().

Parameters

annotation an XML string that is to be used as the content of the 'annotation' subelement of this object.

Returns

integer value indicating success/failure of the function. The possible values returned by this function are:

See also: getAnnotationString(); isSetAnnotation(); setAnnotation(); appendAnnotation(); appendAnnotation(); unsetAnnotation()

def libsbml.SBase.setId	(	self,
		sid
	)

Sets the value of the 'id' attribute of this SBML object.

setId(string sid)   int

: The string sid is copied.

The identifier given by an object's 'id' attribute value is used to identify the object within the SBML model definition. Other objects can refer to the component using this identifier. The data type of 'id' is always SId or a type derived from that, such as UnitSId, depending on the object in question. All data types are defined as follows:

letter ::= 'a'..'z','A'..'Z'
digit  ::= '0'..'9'
idChar ::= letter | digit | '_'
SId    ::= ( letter | '_' ) idChar*

The characters ( and ) are used for grouping, the character * 'zero or more times', and the character | indicates logical 'or'. The equality of SBML identifiers is determined by an exact character sequence match; i.e., comparisons must be performed in a case-sensitive manner. This applies to all uses of SId, SIdRef, and derived types.

Users need to be aware of some important API issues that are the result of the history of SBML and libSBML. Prior to SBML Level 3 Version 2, SBML defined 'id' and 'name' attributes on only a subset of SBML objects. To simplify the work of programmers, libSBML's API provided get, set, check, and unset on the SBase object class itself instead of on individual subobject classes. This made the get/set/etc. methods uniformly available on all objects in the libSBML API. LibSBML simply returned empty strings or otherwise did not act when the methods were applied to SBML objects that were not defined by the SBML specification to have 'id' or 'name' attributes. Additional complications arose with the rule and assignment objects: InitialAssignment, EventAssignment, AssignmentRule, and RateRule. In early versions of SBML, the rule object hierarchy was different, and in addition, then as now, they possess different attributes: 'variable' (for the rules and event assignments), 'symbol' (for initial assignments), or neither (for algebraic rules). Prior to SBML Level 3 Version 2, getId() would always return an empty string, and isSetId() would always return False for objects of these classes.

With the addition of 'id' and 'name' attributes on SBase in Level 3 Version 2, it became necessary to introduce a new way to interact with the attributes more consistently in libSBML to avoid breaking backward compatibility in the behavior of the original 'id' methods. For this reason, libSBML provides four functions (getIdAttribute(), setIdAttribute(), isSetIdAttribute(), and unsetIdAttribute()) that always act on the actual 'id' attribute inherited from SBase, regardless of the object's type. These new methods should be used instead of the older getId()/setId()/etc. methods unless the old behavior is somehow necessary. Regardless of the Level and Version of the SBML, these functions allow client applications to use more generalized code in some situations (for instance, when manipulating objects that are all known to have identifiers). If the object in question does not posess an 'id' attribute according to the SBML specification for the Level and Version in use, libSBML will not allow the identifier to be set, nor will it read or write 'id' attributes for those objects.

Parameters

sid	the string to use as the identifier of this object.

Returns

integer value indicating success/failure of the function. The possible values returned by this function are:

See also: getIdAttribute(); setIdAttribute(); isSetIdAttribute(); unsetIdAttribute()

def libsbml.SBase.setIdAttribute	(	self,
		sid
	)

Sets the value of the 'id' attribute of this SBML object.

setIdAttribute(string sid)   int

: The string sid is copied.

The identifier given by an object's 'id' attribute value is used to identify the object within the SBML model definition. Other objects can refer to the component using this identifier. The data type of 'id' is always SId or a type derived from that, such as UnitSId, depending on the object in question. All data types are defined as follows:

letter ::= 'a'..'z','A'..'Z'
digit  ::= '0'..'9'
idChar ::= letter | digit | '_'
SId    ::= ( letter | '_' ) idChar*

The characters ( and ) are used for grouping, the character * 'zero or more times', and the character | indicates logical 'or'. The equality of SBML identifiers is determined by an exact character sequence match; i.e., comparisons must be performed in a case-sensitive manner. This applies to all uses of SId, SIdRef, and derived types.

Users need to be aware of some important API issues that are the result of the history of SBML and libSBML. Prior to SBML Level 3 Version 2, SBML defined 'id' and 'name' attributes on only a subset of SBML objects. To simplify the work of programmers, libSBML's API provided get, set, check, and unset on the SBase object class itself instead of on individual subobject classes. This made the get/set/etc. methods uniformly available on all objects in the libSBML API. LibSBML simply returned empty strings or otherwise did not act when the methods were applied to SBML objects that were not defined by the SBML specification to have 'id' or 'name' attributes. Additional complications arose with the rule and assignment objects: InitialAssignment, EventAssignment, AssignmentRule, and RateRule. In early versions of SBML, the rule object hierarchy was different, and in addition, then as now, they possess different attributes: 'variable' (for the rules and event assignments), 'symbol' (for initial assignments), or neither (for algebraic rules). Prior to SBML Level 3 Version 2, getId() would always return an empty string, and isSetId() would always return False for objects of these classes.

With the addition of 'id' and 'name' attributes on SBase in Level 3 Version 2, it became necessary to introduce a new way to interact with the attributes more consistently in libSBML to avoid breaking backward compatibility in the behavior of the original 'id' methods. For this reason, libSBML provides four functions (getIdAttribute(), setIdAttribute(), isSetIdAttribute(), and unsetIdAttribute()) that always act on the actual 'id' attribute inherited from SBase, regardless of the object's type. These new methods should be used instead of the older getId()/setId()/etc. methods unless the old behavior is somehow necessary. Regardless of the Level and Version of the SBML, these functions allow client applications to use more generalized code in some situations (for instance, when manipulating objects that are all known to have identifiers). If the object in question does not posess an 'id' attribute according to the SBML specification for the Level and Version in use, libSBML will not allow the identifier to be set, nor will it read or write 'id' attributes for those objects.

Parameters

sid	the string to use as the identifier of this object.

Returns

integer value indicating success/failure of the function. The possible values returned by this function are:

See also: getIdAttribute(); setIdAttribute(); isSetIdAttribute(); unsetIdAttribute()

def libsbml.SBase.setMetaId	(	self,
		metaid
	)

Sets the value of the meta-identifier attribute of this SBML object.

setMetaId(string metaid)   int

: The optional attribute named 'metaid', present on every major SBML component type, is for supporting metadata annotations using RDF (Resource Description Format). The attribute value has the data type XML ID, the XML identifier type, which means each 'metaid' value must be globally unique within an SBML file. The latter point is important, because the uniqueness criterion applies across any attribute with type ID anywhere in the file, not just the 'metaid' attribute used by SBML—something to be aware of if your application-specific XML content inside the 'annotation' subelement happens to use the XML ID type. Although SBML itself specifies the use of XML ID only for the 'metaid' attribute, SBML-compatible applications should be careful if they use XML ID's in XML portions of a model that are not defined by SBML, such as in the application-specific content of the 'annotation' subelement. Finally, note that LibSBML does not provide an explicit XML ID data type; it uses ordinary character strings, which is easier for applications to support.

The string metaid is copied.

Parameters

metaid the identifier string to use as the value of the 'metaid' attribute.

Returns

integer value indicating success/failure of the function. The possible values returned by this function are:

See also: getMetaId(); isSetMetaId()

def libsbml.SBase.setModelHistory	(	self,
		history
	)

Sets the ModelHistory of this object.

setModelHistory(ModelHistory history)   int

The content of history is copied, and this object's existing model history content is deleted.

Parameters

history ModelHistory of this object.

Returns

integer value indicating success/failure of the function. The possible values returned by this function are:

Note: In SBML Level 2, model history annotations were only permitted on the Model element. In SBML Level 3, they are permitted on all SBML components derived from SBase.

def libsbml.SBase.setName	(	self,
		name
	)

Sets the value of the 'name' attribute of this SBML object.

setName(string name)   int

The string in name is copied.

Parameters

name	the new name for the SBML object.

Returns

integer value indicating success/failure of the function. The possible values returned by this function are:

def libsbml.SBase.setNamespaces	(	self,
		xmlns
	)

Sets the namespaces relevant of this SBML object.

setNamespaces(XMLNamespaces xmlns)   int

The content of xmlns is copied, and this object's existing namespace content is deleted.

The SBMLNamespaces object encapsulates SBML Level/Version/namespaces information. It is used to communicate the SBML Level, Version, and (in Level 3) packages used in addition to SBML Level 3 Core.

Parameters

xmlns the namespaces to set.

Returns

integer value indicating success/failure of the function. The possible values returned by this function are:

LIBSBML_OPERATION_SUCCESS

def libsbml.SBase.setNotes	(	self,
		args
	)

This method has multiple variants; they differ in the arguments they accept.

setNotes(XMLNode notes)   int
setNotes(string notes, bool addXHTMLMarkup)   int
setNotes(string notes)   int

Each variant is described separately below.

Method variant with the following signature:

setNotes(string notes, bool addXHTMLMarkup = false)

Sets the value of the 'notes' subelement of this SBML object to a copy of the string notes.

The content of notes is copied, and any existing content of this object's 'notes' subelement is deleted.

The optional SBML element named 'notes', present on every major SBML component type, is intended as a place for storing optional information intended to be seen by humans. An example use of the 'notes' element would be to contain formatted user comments about the model element in which the 'notes' element is enclosed. Every object derived directly or indirectly from type SBase can have a separate value for 'notes', allowing users considerable freedom when adding comments to their models.

The format of 'notes' elements must be XHTML 1.0. To help verify the formatting of 'notes' content, libSBML provides the static utility method SyntaxChecker.hasExpectedXHTMLSyntax(); however, readers are urged to consult the appropriate SBML specification document for the Level and Version of their model for more in-depth explanations. The SBML Level 2 and 3 specifications have considerable detail about how 'notes' element content must be structured.

The following code illustrates a very simple way of setting the notes using this method. Here, the object being annotated is the whole SBML document, but that is for illustration purposes only; you could of course use this same approach to annotate any other SBML component.

 try:
   sbmlDoc = SBMLDocument(3, 1)
 except ValueError:
   print('Could not create SBMLDocument object')
   sys.exit(1)
 
 note = '<body xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'><p>here is my note</p></body>'
 
 status = sbmlDoc.setNotes(note)
 if status != LIBSBML_OPERATION_SUCCESS:
   # Do something to handle the error here.
   print('Unable to set notes on the SBML document object')
   sys.exit(1)

Parameters

notes	an XML string that is to be used as the content of the 'notes' subelement of this object.
addXHTMLMarkup	a boolean indicating whether to wrap the contents of the `notes` argument with XHTML paragraph (`<p>`) tags. This is appropriate when the string in `notes` does not already containg the appropriate XHTML markup.

Returns

integer value indicating success/failure of the function. The possible values returned by this function are:

See also: getNotesString(); isSetNotes(); setNotes(); appendNotes(); appendNotes(); unsetNotes(); SyntaxChecker.hasExpectedXHTMLSyntax()

Note: Owing to the way that language interfaces are created in libSBML, this documentation may show methods that define default values for parameters with text that has the form 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.

Method variant with the following signature:

setNotes(XMLNode notes)

Sets the value of the 'notes' subelement of this SBML object.

The content of notes is copied, and any existing content of this object's 'notes' subelement is deleted.

The optional SBML element named 'notes', present on every major SBML component type, is intended as a place for storing optional information intended to be seen by humans. An example use of the 'notes' element would be to contain formatted user comments about the model element in which the 'notes' element is enclosed. Every object derived directly or indirectly from type SBase can have a separate value for 'notes', allowing users considerable freedom when adding comments to their models.

The format of 'notes' elements must be XHTML 1.0. To help verify the formatting of 'notes' content, libSBML provides the static utility method SyntaxChecker.hasExpectedXHTMLSyntax(); however, readers are urged to consult the appropriate SBML specification document for the Level and Version of their model for more in-depth explanations. The SBML Level 2 and 3 specifications have considerable detail about how 'notes' element content must be structured.

Parameters

notes an XML structure that is to be used as the content of the 'notes' subelement of this object.

Returns

integer value indicating success/failure of the function. The possible values returned by this function are:

See also: getNotesString(); isSetNotes(); setNotes(); appendNotes(); appendNotes(); unsetNotes(); SyntaxChecker.hasExpectedXHTMLSyntax()

def libsbml.SBase.setSBOTerm	(	self,
		args
	)

This method has multiple variants; they differ in the arguments they accept.

setSBOTerm(int value)   int
setSBOTerm(string sboid)   int

Each variant is described separately below.

Method variant with the following signature:

setSBOTerm(int value)

Sets the value of the 'sboTerm' attribute.

: Beginning with SBML Level 2 Version 2, objects derived from SBase have an optional attribute named 'sboTerm' for supporting the use of the Systems Biology Ontology. In SBML proper, the data type of the attribute is a string of the form 'SBO:NNNNNNN', where 'NNNNNNN' is a seven digit integer number; libSBML simplifies the representation by only storing the 'NNNNNNN' integer portion. Thus, in libSBML, the 'sboTerm' attribute on SBase has data type int, and SBO identifiers are stored simply as integers.

: SBO terms are a type of optional annotation, and each different class of SBML object derived from SBase imposes its own requirements about the values permitted for 'sboTerm'. More details can be found in SBML specifications for Level 2 Version 2 and above.

Parameters

value the NNNNNNN integer portion of the SBO identifier.

Returns

integer value indicating success/failure of the function. The possible values returned by this function are:

See also: setSBOTerm()

Method variant with the following signature:

setSBOTerm(string sboid)

Sets the value of the 'sboTerm' attribute by string.

: Beginning with SBML Level 2 Version 2, objects derived from SBase have an optional attribute named 'sboTerm' for supporting the use of the Systems Biology Ontology. In SBML proper, the data type of the attribute is a string of the form 'SBO:NNNNNNN', where 'NNNNNNN' is a seven digit integer number; libSBML simplifies the representation by only storing the 'NNNNNNN' integer portion. Thus, in libSBML, the 'sboTerm' attribute on SBase has data type int, and SBO identifiers are stored simply as integers.

: SBO terms are a type of optional annotation, and each different class of SBML object derived from SBase imposes its own requirements about the values permitted for 'sboTerm'. More details can be found in SBML specifications for Level 2 Version 2 and above.

Parameters

sboid the SBO identifier string of the form 'SBO:NNNNNNN'.

Returns

integer value indicating success/failure of the function. The possible values returned by this function are:

See also: setSBOTerm()

def libsbml.SBase.toSBML ( self )

Returns a string consisting of a partial SBML corresponding to just this object.

toSBML()   string

Returns: the partial SBML that describes this SBML object.

Warning: This is primarily provided for testing and debugging purposes. It may be removed in a future version of libSBML.

def libsbml.SBase.toXMLNode ( self )

Returns this element as an XMLNode.

toXMLNode()   XMLNode

Returns: this element as an XMLNode.

Warning: This operation is computationally expensive, because the element has to be fully serialized to a string and then parsed into the XMLNode structure. Attempting to convert a large tree structure (e.g., a large Model) may consume significant computer memory and time.

def libsbml.SBase.unsetAnnotation ( self )

Unsets the value of the 'annotation' subelement of this SBML object.

unsetAnnotation()   int

Whereas the SBase 'notes' subelement is a container for content to be shown directly to humans, the 'annotation' element is a container for optional software-generated content not meant to be shown to humans. Every object derived from SBase can have its own value for 'annotation'. The element's content type is XML type 'any', allowing essentially arbitrary well-formed XML data content.

SBML places a few restrictions on the organization of the content of annotations; these are intended to help software tools read and write the data as well as help reduce conflicts between annotations added by different tools. Please see the SBML specifications for more details.

Returns

integer value indicating success/failure of the function. This particular function only does one thing irrespective of user input or object state, and thus will only return a single value:

LIBSBML_OPERATION_SUCCESS

See also: getAnnotation(); getAnnotationString(); isSetAnnotation(); setAnnotation(); setAnnotation(); appendAnnotation(); appendAnnotation()

def libsbml.SBase.unsetCVTerms ( self )

Clears the list of CVTerm objects attached to this SBML object.

unsetCVTerms()   int

Returns

integer value indicating success/failure of the function. The possible values returned by this function are:

def libsbml.SBase.unsetId ( self )

Unsets the value of the 'id' attribute of this SBML object.

unsetId()   int

The identifier given by an object's 'id' attribute value is used to identify the object within the SBML model definition. Other objects can refer to the component using this identifier. The data type of 'id' is always SId or a type derived from that, such as UnitSId, depending on the object in question. All data types are defined as follows:

letter ::= 'a'..'z','A'..'Z'
digit  ::= '0'..'9'
idChar ::= letter | digit | '_'
SId    ::= ( letter | '_' ) idChar*

The characters ( and ) are used for grouping, the character * 'zero or more times', and the character | indicates logical 'or'. The equality of SBML identifiers is determined by an exact character sequence match; i.e., comparisons must be performed in a case-sensitive manner. This applies to all uses of SId, SIdRef, and derived types.

Users need to be aware of some important API issues that are the result of the history of SBML and libSBML. Prior to SBML Level 3 Version 2, SBML defined 'id' and 'name' attributes on only a subset of SBML objects. To simplify the work of programmers, libSBML's API provided get, set, check, and unset on the SBase object class itself instead of on individual subobject classes. This made the get/set/etc. methods uniformly available on all objects in the libSBML API. LibSBML simply returned empty strings or otherwise did not act when the methods were applied to SBML objects that were not defined by the SBML specification to have 'id' or 'name' attributes. Additional complications arose with the rule and assignment objects: InitialAssignment, EventAssignment, AssignmentRule, and RateRule. In early versions of SBML, the rule object hierarchy was different, and in addition, then as now, they possess different attributes: 'variable' (for the rules and event assignments), 'symbol' (for initial assignments), or neither (for algebraic rules). Prior to SBML Level 3 Version 2, getId() would always return an empty string, and isSetId() would always return False for objects of these classes.

With the addition of 'id' and 'name' attributes on SBase in Level 3 Version 2, it became necessary to introduce a new way to interact with the attributes more consistently in libSBML to avoid breaking backward compatibility in the behavior of the original 'id' methods. For this reason, libSBML provides four functions (getIdAttribute(), setIdAttribute(), isSetIdAttribute(), and unsetIdAttribute()) that always act on the actual 'id' attribute inherited from SBase, regardless of the object's type. These new methods should be used instead of the older getId()/setId()/etc. methods unless the old behavior is somehow necessary. Regardless of the Level and Version of the SBML, these functions allow client applications to use more generalized code in some situations (for instance, when manipulating objects that are all known to have identifiers). If the object in question does not posess an 'id' attribute according to the SBML specification for the Level and Version in use, libSBML will not allow the identifier to be set, nor will it read or write 'id' attributes for those objects.

Returns

integer value indicating success/failure of the function. The possible values returned by this function are:

See also: getIdAttribute(); setIdAttribute(); isSetIdAttribute(); unsetIdAttribute()

def libsbml.SBase.unsetIdAttribute ( self )

Unsets the value of the 'id' attribute of this SBML object.

unsetIdAttribute()   int

Most (but not all) objects in SBML include two common attributes: 'id' and 'name'. The identifier given by an object's 'id' attribute value is used to identify the object within the SBML model definition. Other objects can refer to the component using this identifier.

Returns

integer value indicating success/failure of the function. The possible values returned by this function are:

See also: getIdAttribute(); setIdAttribute(); isSetIdAttribute()

def libsbml.SBase.unsetMetaId ( self )

Unsets the value of the 'metaid' attribute of this SBML object.

unsetMetaId()   int

: The optional attribute named 'metaid', present on every major SBML component type, is for supporting metadata annotations using RDF (Resource Description Format). The attribute value has the data type XML ID, the XML identifier type, which means each 'metaid' value must be globally unique within an SBML file. The latter point is important, because the uniqueness criterion applies across any attribute with type ID anywhere in the file, not just the 'metaid' attribute used by SBML—something to be aware of if your application-specific XML content inside the 'annotation' subelement happens to use the XML ID type. Although SBML itself specifies the use of XML ID only for the 'metaid' attribute, SBML-compatible applications should be careful if they use XML ID's in XML portions of a model that are not defined by SBML, such as in the application-specific content of the 'annotation' subelement. Finally, note that LibSBML does not provide an explicit XML ID data type; it uses ordinary character strings, which is easier for applications to support.

Returns

integer value indicating success/failure of the function. The possible values returned by this function are:

def libsbml.SBase.unsetModelHistory ( self )

Unsets the ModelHistory object attached to this object.

unsetModelHistory()   int

Returns

integer value indicating success/failure of the function. The possible values returned by this function are:

Note: In SBML Level 2, model history annotations were only permitted on the Model element. In SBML Level 3, they are permitted on all SBML components derived from SBase.

def libsbml.SBase.unsetName ( self )

Unsets the value of the 'name' attribute of this SBML object.

unsetName()   int

: In SBML Level 3 Version 2, the 'id' and 'name' attributes were moved to SBase directly, instead of being defined individually for many (but not all) objects. LibSBML has for a long time provided functions defined on SBase itself to get, set, and unset those attributes, which would fail or otherwise return empty strings if executed on any object for which those attributes were not defined. Now that all SBase objects define those attributes, those functions now succeed for any object with the appropriate level and version.

The 'name' attribute is optional and is not intended to be used for cross-referencing purposes within a model. Its purpose instead is to provide a human-readable label for the component. The data type of 'name' is the type string defined in XML Schema. SBML imposes no restrictions as to the content of 'name' attributes beyond those restrictions defined by the string type in XML Schema.

The recommended practice for handling 'name' is as follows. If a software tool has the capability for displaying the content of 'name' attributes, it should display this content to the user as a component's label instead of the component's 'id'. If the user interface does not have this capability (e.g., because it cannot display or use special characters in symbol names), or if the 'name' attribute is missing on a given component, then the user interface should display the value of the 'id' attribute instead. (Script language interpreters are especially likely to display 'id' instead of 'name'.)

As a consequence of the above, authors of systems that automatically generate the values of 'id' attributes should be aware some systems may display the 'id''s to the user. Authors therefore may wish to take some care to have their software create 'id' values that are: (a) reasonably easy for humans to type and read; and (b) likely to be meaningful, for example by making the 'id' attribute be an abbreviated form of the name attribute value.

An additional point worth mentioning is although there are restrictions on the uniqueness of 'id' values, there are no restrictions on the uniqueness of 'name' values in a model. This allows software applications leeway in assigning component identifiers.

Regardless of the level and version of the SBML, these functions allow client applications to use more generalized code in some situations (for instance, when manipulating objects that are all known to have names). If the object in question does not posess a 'name' attribute according to the SBML specification for the Level and Version in use, libSBML will not allow the name to be set, nor will it read or write 'name' attributes for those objects.

Returns

integer value indicating success/failure of the function. The possible values returned by this function are:

See also: getName(); setName(); isSetName()

def libsbml.SBase.unsetNotes ( self )

Unsets the value of the 'notes' subelement of this SBML object.

unsetNotes()   int

The optional SBML element named 'notes', present on every major SBML component type, is intended as a place for storing optional information intended to be seen by humans. An example use of the 'notes' element would be to contain formatted user comments about the model element in which the 'notes' element is enclosed. Every object derived directly or indirectly from type SBase can have a separate value for 'notes', allowing users considerable freedom when adding comments to their models.

The format of 'notes' elements must be XHTML 1.0. To help verify the formatting of 'notes' content, libSBML provides the static utility method SyntaxChecker.hasExpectedXHTMLSyntax(); however, readers are urged to consult the appropriate SBML specification document for the Level and Version of their model for more in-depth explanations. The SBML Level 2 and 3 specifications have considerable detail about how 'notes' element content must be structured.

Returns

integer value indicating success/failure of the function. This particular function only does one thing irrespective of user input or object state, and thus will only return a single value:

LIBSBML_OPERATION_SUCCESS

See also: getNotesString(); isSetNotes(); setNotes(); setNotes(); appendNotes(); appendNotes(); SyntaxChecker.hasExpectedXHTMLSyntax()

def libsbml.SBase.unsetSBOTerm ( self )

Unsets the value of the 'sboTerm' attribute of this SBML object.

unsetSBOTerm()   int

Returns

integer value indicating success/failure of the function. The possible values returned by this function are:

def libsbml.SBase.unsetUserData ( self )

Unsets the user data of this element.

unsetUserData()   int

: The user data associated with an SBML object can be used by an application developer to attach custom information to that object in the model. In case of a deep copy, this data will passed as-is. The data attribute will never be interpreted by libSBML.

Returns

integer value indicating success/failure of the function. The possible values returned by this function are:

Detailed Description

Standard format for annotations linking data resources

Public Member Functions

Member Function Documentation