olca-schema

This is a package for reading and writing data sets in the openLCA schema format version 2. It provides a typed class model of the schema elements, methods for reading and writing them in the JSON format, reading and writing data sets in zip packages, and some utility methods.

Usage

The package is published on PyPI and can be installed with pip:

pip install olca-schema

Here is a small example that creates a package that can be imported into openLCA 2:

import olca_schema as o
import olca_schema.zipio as zipio

# create a unit group and flow property
units = o.new_unit_group('Units of mass', 'kg')
kg = units.units[0]
mass = o.new_flow_property('Mass', units)

# create a product flow and a process with the product as output
steel = o.new_product('Steel', mass)
process = o.new_process('Steel production')
output = o.new_output(process, steel, 1, kg)
output.is_quantitative_reference = True

# prints the Json string of the process
print(process.to_json())

# write a zip package with the data sets
with zipio.ZipWriter('path/to/example.zip') as w:
    for entity in [units, mass, steel, process]:
        w.write(entity)

Tests and packaging

The Python library for the openLCA schema is part of the olca-schema project. It does not have any runtime dependencies. The optional test and packaging extras are used for local development tasks.

Run the tests with:

cd olca-schema/py
# easy with uv; initialize the virtual environment
uv venv [-p 3.12]
# install the test dependencies
uv sync --extra test
# run the tests
uv run pytest -v

Build and validate a release package with:

# install the packaging dependencies
uv sync --extra packaging
# build the source and wheel distributions
uv run python -m build
# validate the generated artifacts
uv run twine check dist/*