Interface AnnotationProperty

All Superinterfaces:

OntologyResource

All Known Implementing Classes:

LexicalAnnotationProperty

public interface AnnotationProperty
extends OntologyResource

Author:

pavlidis

Method Summary

Modifier and Type	Method	Description
String	getContents()	The value associated to this annotation as a string.
String	getProperty()	A label for the property of this annotation.
default String	getValueUri()	The URI of this annotation's value when the value is a URI resource, else null (literal values, blank nodes).

Methods inherited from interface OntologyResource

getComment, getLabel, getLocalName, getUri, isObsolete

Method Details

getProperty

String getProperty()

A label for the property of this annotation.

getContents

@Nullable
String getContents()

The value associated to this annotation as a string.

🛑 When the value is a RESOURCE, this returns its rdfs:label — not its URI — and null when the resource carries no label. That indirection is right for display and wrong for identity: use getValueUri() whenever the annotation names a term rather than describes one.

getValueUri

@Nullable
default String getValueUri()

The URI of this annotation's value when the value is a URI resource, else null (literal values, blank nodes).

Exists because getContents() resolves a resource to its label, and a label is not an identity. MONDO's crossSpeciesExactMatch is the case that proved it: the mapping MONDO:0700199 → MONDO:0005061 came back as the string "lung adenocarcinoma", which names BOTH MONDO:0005061 (a disease) and HP:0030078 (a phenotype) equally well. A consumer repairing an annotation from that string can silently land on the phenotype — worse than not repairing, because it looks like it worked.