API

There are two methods for accessing data through the ConceptNet 5.1 API: lookup and search.

• Lookup is for when you know the URI of an object in ConceptNet, and want to see a list of edges that include it.
• Search finds a list of edges that match certain criteria.

Lookup

To look up an object by its URI, go to http://conceptnet5.media.mit.edu/data/5.1 followed by the URI. For example, the concept "toast", with URI /c/en/toast, can be found at: http://conceptnet5.media.mit.edu/data/5.1/c/en/toast

You can set the following GET arguments to modify the returned results:

• limit=n: change the number of results from the default of 50.
• offset=n: skip the first n results.
• filter=core|core-assertions: filter the returned results -- see "Filters" below.

Examples

To get the 6th through 10th highest-weight edges for "toast", you could go to: http://conceptnet5.media.mit.edu/data/5.1/c/en/toast?offset=5&limit=5

To get 50 facts about bagels, including when "bagel" appears in phrases such as "onion bagel": http://conceptnet5.media.mit.edu/data/5.1/search?text=bagel

Search

The base URL for searching is http://conceptnet5.media.mit.edu/data/5.1/search. You add GET arguments to this to specify what to search for.

The following arguments are supported:

• {id, uri, rel, start, end, context, dataset, license}=URI: giving a ConceptNet URI for any of these parameters will return edges whose corresponding fields start with the given path.
• nodes=URI: returns edges whose rel, start, or end start with the given URI.
• {startLemmas, endLemmas, relLemmas}=word: returns edges containing the given lemmatized word anywhere in their start, end, or rel respectively.
• text=word: matches any of startLemmas, endLemmas, or relLemmas.
• surfaceText=word: matches edges with the given word in their surface text. The word is not lemmatized, but it is a case-insensitive match.
• minWeight=weight: filters for edges whose weight is at least weight.
• limit=n: change the number of results from the default of 50.
• offset=n: skip the first n results.
• features=str: Takes in a feature string (an assertion with one open slot), and returns edges having exactly that string as one of their features. Look at the features field of returned results for examples.
• filter=core|core-assertions: filter the returned results -- see "Filters" below.

For example, to find 10 things that are parts of a car, you can do this: http://conceptnet5.media.mit.edu/data/5.1/search?rel=/r/PartOf&end=/c/en/car&limit=10

Result format

The result is a JSON data structure containing:

• maxScore: the Solr score of the best match.
• numFound: an estimate of how many matches there are total.
• edges: the list of edges. Each edge is a JSON data structure containing all the fields of a ConceptNet edge, as well as a score. The score is a combination of the absolute value of the edge weight and a factor for how good a match it is for your query, according to Solr. The results are sorted by descending score.

Filters

The filter parameter lets you see only certain kinds of edges:

• filter=core: Only get edges from the ConceptNet 5 Core (not from ShareAlike resources).
• filter=core-assertions: We search for edges by default, and there can be many edges representing the same assertion. The core-assertions filter returns one result per assertion, whose weight is the total score of all the included edges. These are represented as virtual edges from the dataset /d/conceptnet/5/combined-core.

We only create aggregated assertions in the ConceptNet 5 Core, and they are updated less frequently than the edge list.