Choose what gets loaded¶

Pointing OntoEnv at a directory picks up every RDF file underneath it, including test fixtures, drafts, and vendored copies. Two independent filter layers narrow that down.

Layer	Matches on	CLI flags	Python arguments
File filters	File paths, gitignore-style globs	`-i/--includes`, `-e/--excludes`	`includes=`, `excludes=`
Ontology filters	Ontology IRIs, regular expressions	`--include-ontology`, `--exclude-ontology`	`include_ontologies=`, `exclude_ontologies=`

File filters run first and decide what gets parsed. Ontology filters run after parsing, once the declared IRI is known.

Filter by file path¶

Globs support *, ?, and **. A bare directory expands to dir/** automatically.

The following commands are alternatives. Each creates a new environment:

# Only Turtle files
$ ontoenv init ./ontologies --includes '*.ttl'

# Everything except the test fixtures
$ ontoenv init . --excludes 'lib/tests' 'target'

env = OntoEnv.connect(
    "./ontology-env",
    search_directories=["."],
    includes=["*.ttl", "*.xml"],
    excludes=["lib/tests", "target"],
)
env.update()

connect saves the filters. update scans . and applies them to the paths it finds.

The default include list is ['*.ttl', '*.xml', '*.n3'].

Filter by ontology IRI¶

Use these when the file layout does not tell you what you need to know — for example when one directory holds both your ontologies and vendored ones.

Includes act as a whitelist: if any include pattern is set, an ontology must match one of them. Excludes run last and prune whatever slipped through.

$ ontoenv init . \
    --include-ontology '^https://example\.com/' \
    --exclude-ontology 'experimental'

env = OntoEnv.connect(
    "./ontology-env",
    search_directories=["."],
    include_ontologies=[r"^https://example\.com/"],
    exclude_ontologies=[r"experimental"],
)
env.update()

These are regular expressions, not globs, and they are matched against the full ontology IRI. connect saves them; update scans and parses the candidate files before applying the IRI filters.

Reject files without an ontology declaration¶

By default a file with no owl:Ontology declaration is skipped with a warning. To make it an error:

$ ontoenv init ./ontologies --require-ontology-names

env = OntoEnv.connect("./ontology-env", require_ontology_names=True)
env.update()

connect saves the requirement. update is the operation that scans the files and raises if one has no ontology declaration.

Change filters on an existing environment¶

Filters are saved in .ontoenv/config.json and re-applied by every later command. The following are independent examples of inspecting and editing the path-based lists:

$ ontoenv config list
$ ontoenv config add locations ./more-ontologies
$ ontoenv config remove locations ./old-path
$ ontoenv config add includes '*.n3'

locations, includes, and excludes are list-valued, so they take config add / config remove rather than config set. The ontology-IRI regex lists (include_ontologies, exclude_ontologies) have no config support — edit .ontoenv/config.json directly, or pass the flags on the next command.

These config commands do not scan sources. Run ontoenv update after editing the lists when the environment should be reconciled with the new settings.

From Python, passing a value to connect overrides the saved one; omitting it keeps the saved one. Passing an empty list is an explicit override that clears the setting:

# Keep everything as saved
env = OntoEnv.connect("./ontology-env")

# Override the saved search directories
env = OntoEnv.connect("./ontology-env", search_directories=["./vendor"])

# Explicitly clear them
env = OntoEnv.connect("./ontology-env", search_directories=[])

Changing filters does not rescan anything by itself. The new settings apply on the next update():

env = OntoEnv.connect("./ontology-env", excludes=["vendor"])
env.update()   # now the exclusion takes effect