w2g

The World Wide Graph

• Introduction
• Installing w2g (Server)
• Goals & Philosophy
• Data Structures
• Privacy, Security & Conflicts of Interest
• Using the Graph API (Clients)

Introduction

The World Wide Graph (w2g) aims to become a global database of unique entities (people, places, things) which is accessible by the entire World Wide Web. It aims to aggregate and entity resolve existing entity graph services, like Wikidata, Freebase, Google Knowledge Graph, the Facebook Graph, as well as provides its own database (for creating new entities which don't align with these services -- e.g. Wikidata doesn't allow "unnotable" names of people -- or for when one of these services is read only and needs to be extended).

A neat property of w2g is, it's more than an raw entity database which unites existing services. w2g has the ability to create directed edges between entities and arbitrary contexts (think of them like isolated groups of edges you can control / restrict to your application or preferences). For instance, one can establish a context of Inventions whose intent is to create a dependency graph which demonstrates how to axiomatically build an invention. One can then establish an edge between and entity Electric Generator and Magnet.

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Python. w2g requires python2.7 or python3.4. Note: there are some features (e.g. the /admin sqlalchemy CMS interface -- 2.7 only) which have dependencies which are only available for either 2.7 or 3.4.
• Postgresql 9.4 e.g. postgresql-9.4 postgresql-server-dev-9.4 (aptitude)

Installation

$ git clone https://github.com/w2g/w2g.git
$ cd w2g
$ ./install.sh  # for ubuntu / debian system pre-requisite dependencies (like psql) 
$ pip install .  # for python lib dependencies 

Setting up the DB

First, create a user and a database for the project to use:

$ sudo -u postgres psql
postgres=# create user w2g with password 'yourPasswordHere' login createdb;
postgres=# create database w2g owner w2g;

Next, create a file called settings.cfg with the following contents within w2g/configs/. Replace yourPasswordHere with the value you choose when creating your pql database. Under the [security] section, fill in a value for secret = by generating os.urandom(24) -- see: http://flask.pocoo.org/docs/0.10/quickstart/#sessions "How to generate good secret keys":

[server]
host = 0.0.0.0
port = 8080
debug = 1
cors = 1

[security]
secret = 

[db]
user = w2g
pw = yourPasswordHere

Loading sql data from a dump (Coming soon)

I am attempting to setup an endpoint https://graph.global/v1/db to download/stream a sql dump of the production database (so people can back it up or easily achieve a dump).

Creating an Tables

Once your database and user have been created, and the user has the correct permissions, run the following:

$ cd w2g
$ ls  # confirm you're in the package root
api/ app.py configs/ ...
$ python
>>> import api
>>> api.core.Base.metadata.create_all(api.engine)  # creates tables from sqlalchemy models in api.graph.py

Run w2g server

$ python app.py
* Running on http://0.0.0.0:8080/ (Press CTRL+C to quit)

Data Structures

• contexts are named semantic groups (name comes from the entity it represents) under which a set of edges are applicable. For instance, an edge representing the entity (property) derivation may be created between and entity named Rational and an entity named Ratio within the context of the entity Etymology. However, consider someone else may be instead instead in comparing the relationship of these entities as mathematical terms.
• edges are directed relationships (often dependencies) between two entities. Edges themselves can be associated with / represent an entity (have a relation_eid).

Goals & Philosophy

• Interoperability. To allow any website to connect to the Graph and resolve/render terms against semantic elements. This is done in a way which is very similar to wikidata's qlabel.
• Pub/sub scribe to tags and get notified when your (personal) entity is @mentioned.

W2g will work similarly to Wikipedia + Wikidata. Anyone can suggest edits or register nodes, permitting they provide adequate proof. Some imaginary w2g committee will reviews each case for quality and accuracy.

Want to be on the committee? Email michael.karpeles@gmail.com to help

Privacy, Security & Conflicts of Interest

W2g is an open source, non-profit initiative. I'm mostly building it as a convenient programatic interface for establishing dependency graphs between entities which already exist on disprate remote services.

Consuming the Graph

Any website in the world can tap into the global graph (CORs is enabled on the API). Doing so is as easy as importing a single javascript library, just like google analytics. Spoiler: The javascript library graph.js doesn't exactly exist yet but it will be (optionally) served via some cdn, such as:

<script type="text/javascript" src="https://graph.global/static/assets/graph.js"></script>

By including graph.js in your website, any html tag which references a w2g entity will be resolved and rendered as a w2g tag (additionally with correct schema.org markup). By default, a tag has minimal style, like a link / anchor tag. It is distincly colored (green, instead of blue) and italicized by the cite tag (instead of underlined)