elton

Elton helps to access, review and index existing species interaction datasets.

A commandline tool for GloBI named after ecologist Charles S. Elton, author of Animal Ecology.

Table of Contents

• Install
• Documentation
• Usage
• Examples
• Building
• Contribute
• License

Install

Elton needs Java 8+ to run.Why OpenJDK 8?. Because OpenJDK 8 is Long Term Supported (LTS), and (at time of writing Nov 2021) supported until at least May 2026, longer than any of the newer OpenJDK versions.

Official releases

On linux/mac, you can run the following to install a copy of elton:

sudo sh -c '(echo "#!/usr/bin/env sh" && curl -L https://github.com/globalbioticinteractions/elton/releases/download/0.13.9/elton.jar) > /usr/local/bin/elton && chmod +x /usr/local/bin/elton' && elton version

Configuration to help Global Biotic Interactions (GloBI, https://globalbioticinteractions.org) index:

You can now run Elton from your commandline by typing something like elton version or any of the other documented commands.

You can also install Elton by manually downloading elton.jar from one of the releases. To start Elton using this method, you have to execute something like java -jar elton.jar versions or any of the other documented commands.

To install elton as a debian package use:

curl -L https://github.com/globalbioticinteractions/elton/releases/download/0.13.9/elton.deb\
 > elton.deb 
sudo apt install ./elton.deb

Maven, Gradle, SBT

Elton is made available through a maven repository.

To include elton in your project, add the following sections to your pom.xml (or equivalent for sbt, gradle etc):

  <repositories>
    <repository>
        <id>depot.globalbioticinteractions.org</id>
        <url>https://depot.globalbioticinteractions.org/release</url>
    </repository>
  </repositories>

  <dependencies>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>org.globalbioticinteractions</groupId>
      <artifactId>elton</artifactId>
      <version>0.3.2</version>
    </dependency>
  </dependencies>

Building

• Clone this repository
• Run mvn package
• Copy target/elton-0.3.2-jar-with-dependencies.jar
• Run tests using mvn test.

Documentation

For documentation, see docs/elton.adoc.

Usage

Note that in the following section, it is assumed that Elton can be started by typing elton. If this is not possible, see Install for instructions on how to run Elton commands.

Print usage

elton [command] [command options]

with

Usage: <main class> [command] [command options]
  Commands:
    list      List Available Datasets
      Usage: list [options] [namespace1] [namespace2] ...
        Options:
          --cache-dir, -c
            cache directory
            Default: ./datasets
          --offline, -o
            offline
            Default: false

    update      Update Datasets with Local Repository
      Usage: update [options] [namespace1] [namespace2] ...
        Options:
          --cache-dir, -c
            cache directory
            Default: ./datasets

    names      List Dataset (Taxon) Names For Local Datasets
      Usage: names [options] [namespace1] [namespace2] ...
        Options:
          --cache-dir, -c
            cache directory
            Default: ./datasets

    interactions      List Interacting Taxon Pairs For Local Datasets
      Usage: interactions [options] [namespace1] [namespace2] ...
        Options:
          --cache-dir, -c
            cache directory
            Default: ./datasets

    nanopubs      Generate Nanopubs Describing Interactions in Local Datasets
      Usage: nanopubs [options] [namespace1] [namespace2] ...
        Options:
          --cache-dir, -c
            cache directory
            Default: ./datasets

    check      Check Dataset Accessibility
      Usage: check [options] [namespace1] [namespace2] ...
        Options:
          --cache-dir, -c
            cache directory
            Default: ./datasets
          --offline, -o
            offline
            Default: false

    version      Show Version
      Usage: version

Examples

List all datasets

elton list

Update / download single dataset and cache locally in ./dataset folder

elton update globalbioticinteractions/template-dataset

Update / download all datasets (might take a while)

elton update

Note that elton is using a rate-limited GitHub APIs. If you are seeing "Forbidden" http errors, suggest to provide OAUTH key/secret like:

java -Dgithub.client.id=[client id] -Dgithub.client.secret=[client secret] -jar elton.jar update

Please refer to GitHub API documentation like https://developer.github.com/v3/#rate-limiting learn more about getting a client id/secret pair.

List interactions of all locally cached datasets

elton interactions

Note that you can retrieve an archived (and versioned) copy of existing species interaction datasets using Elton's archive .

Contribute

Feel free to join in. All welcome. Open an issue!

License

GPL