time-agnostic-library

time-agnostic-library is a Python >=3.10 library that allows performing time-travel queries on RDF datasets compliant with the OCDM v2.0.1 provenance specification.

Tested on Blazegraph, GraphDB, Apache Jena Fuseki, and OpenLink Virtuoso.

Full documentation: https://opencitations.github.io/time-agnostic-library

Quick start

pip install time-agnostic-library

import json
from time_agnostic_library.agnostic_entity import AgnosticEntity

with open("./config.json") as f:
    config = json.load(f)

# Get the full history of an entity
entity = AgnosticEntity(res="https://example.com/br/1", config=config)
history, prov_metadata = entity.get_history(include_prov_metadata=True)

# Get an entity's state at a specific time
entity.get_state_at_time(time=("2023-01-01", "2023-12-31"))

from time_agnostic_library.agnostic_query import VersionQuery, DeltaQuery

# Run a SPARQL query on a specific version
query = VersionQuery(
    query="SELECT ...",
    on_time=("2023-01-01", None),
    merge_aware=True,
    include_prov_metadata=True,
    config_path="./config.json",
)
results, provenance, other_provenance = query.run_agnostic_query()

# Track changes across the entire history
delta = DeltaQuery(query="SELECT ...", config_path="./config.json")
results, provenance, other_provenance = delta.run_agnostic_query()

All date/time values must be in ISO 8601 format (e.g., 2023-01-01, 2023-01-01T00:00:00+00:00).

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for development setup, testing, and release process.

Changelog

All notable changes are documented in CHANGELOG.md.

How to cite

If you use the Time Agnostic Library, please cite both the preprint and the software:

Massari, A., Peroni, S. (2026). Time travel for knowledge graphs: live queries over RDF change histories. arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2210.02534

@misc{massari2026timetravelknowledgegraphs,
  title = {Time travel for knowledge graphs: live queries over RDF change histories},
  author = {Arcangelo Massari and Silvio Peroni},
  year = {2026},
  publisher = {arXiv},
  doi = {10.48550/arXiv.2210.02534}
}

To cite the latest version of this software (8.0.1), use this BibTeX entry:

@software{Time-Agnostic-Library-8.0.1,
author = {Massari, Arcangelo},
title = {Time Agnostic Library},
url = {https://archive.softwareheritage.org/swh:1:snp:897bd6683fa5d326178f519316d4faf9d3a7b08d;origin=https://github.com/opencitations/time-agnostic-library},
version = {8.0.1},
year = {2026}
}