to-cei 0.4.1

to-CEI

to_cei — Monasterium CEI builder

A small Python library for assembling CEI (Charter Encoding Initiative) charters and charter groups as objects, then serialising them to XML files ready for import into Monasterium.net.

Requires Python 3.13+.

Install

pip install to_cei
# or
uv add to_cei

Quick start

Build a minimal valid charter and write it to disk:

from to_cei import Charter

charter = Charter(
    id_text="1457_03_15",
    id_norm="urn:example:1457_03_15",
    date_value="14570315",
    abstract="Konrad von Lintz beurkundet einen Vertrag.",
    issuers="Konrad von Lintz",
    issued_place="Wien",
)

charter.to_file("./out")  # writes ./out/1457_03_15.cei.xml

charter.to_xml() returns an lxml._Element if you would rather embed the result in a larger pipeline.

Dates

Real archival data routinely mixes complete dates with partial dates ("only the year is known", "sometime in the 15th century") and "no date" markers. to_cei.dates.parse handles all three: a Time for exact dates, a (Time, Time) range for partial ones, None for explicit no-date markers.

Many input forms, one output

For any given exact date, the input forms below all parse to the same Time. Use whichever shape your source data already happens to be in — there is no preferred input format:

from to_cei import dates

# Year 1457, March 15 — these all produce identical Time objects:
dates.parse("1457-03-15")    # ISO 8601
dates.parse("14570315")      # MOM (the schema's value-attribute form)
dates.parse("1457.03.15")    # dotted YMD
dates.parse("15.03.1457")    # German dotted DMY
dates.parse("15/03/1457")    # slashed DMY

A note on MOM: it's not really "one input format among many" — it's the CEI schema's @value attribute format, which the parser also accepts on input so existing CEI data round-trips cleanly. For human input prefer ISO or dotted; reach for MOM when you're piping data that came out of CEI in the first place.

Pre-1000 (3-digit) years

The CEI schema's value-attribute form drops leading zeros for years under 1000 — year 769 is "7690101", not "07690101". The parser mirrors that exactly. Other formats handle it the natural way:

# Year 769, January 1
dates.parse("0769-01-01")    # ✓ ISO (leading zero is fine)
dates.parse("0769.01.01")    # ✓ dotted YMD
dates.parse("01.01.0769")    # ✓ German dotted DMY
dates.parse("0769")          # ✓ bare year → full-year range
dates.parse("769")           # ✓ bare year → full-year range
dates.parse("7690101")       # ✓ MOM (schema form, no padding)
dates.parse("07690101")      # ✗ rejected — not a valid MOM string

to_cei.dates.to_mom_date_value (used internally for serialization) always emits the unpadded schema form, so Charter round-trips correctly regardless of which input shape you started from.

Years under 100

The schema regex requires the year part to be at least 3 characters, so years below 100 must still be padded to three digits in MOM form. Year 12, December 11 is "0121211" — not "121211". ISO and dotted formats accept either padded or unpadded years, but be careful with short unpadded variants: a string like "12.12.11" is parsed as day 12, month 12, year 11 (the German DMY parser runs before the YMD one and 2-digit year components match it). For early dates, prefer fully-padded forms to remove the ambiguity:

dates.parse("0012-12-11")    # ✓ year 12, Dec 11 (ISO, padded)
dates.parse("0121211")       # ✓ year 12, Dec 11 (MOM, year padded)
dates.parse("11.12.0012")    # ✓ year 12, Dec 11 (German DMY, padded)
dates.parse("0012.12.11")    # ✓ year 12, Dec 11 (dotted YMD, padded)

dates.parse("121211")        # ✗ rejected — MOM needs the 7-char form
dates.parse("12.12.11")      # ⚠ year 11, Dec 12 (parsed as DMY)
dates.parse("12-12-11")      # ⚠ year 11, Dec 12 (parsed as DMY)

In practice this only matters for dates earlier than AD 100 — well before any charter.

Partial dates and German archival expressions

# MOM "unknown" sentinels — produce ranges
dates.parse("14570399")      # unknown day  → full-month range
dates.parse("14579999")      # unknown month → full-year range

# Year-only → full year range
dates.parse("1457")

# German archival hedging
dates.parse("um 1457")                       # ca./circa/etwa → full year
dates.parse("1457 oder 1458")                # 2-year span
dates.parse("zwischen 1457 und 1460")        # 4-year span
dates.parse("15. Jahrhundert")               # 1401-01-01 … 1500-12-31
dates.parse("Anfang des 15. Jahrhunderts")   # century third

# Explicit range
dates.parse(("1457-03-15", "1457-03-20"))

What gets returned

Form	Result
ISO, dotted/slashed, MOM exact, datetime, Time	single Time
MOM with 99-day or 99-month, bare year, German fuzzy, explicit 2-tuple	(Time, Time) range
no-date marker (sine dato, s.d., o.D., n.d., 99999999, empty string)	None

Recognised string formats (priority order)

parse tries each built-in below in order; the first match wins.

#	Format	Examples
1	ISO 8601	"1457-03-15", "0769-01-01"
2	MOM (CEI @value form)	"14570315", "14570399", "14579999", "7690101"
3	Dotted/slashed numeric	"15.03.1457" (German DMY), "1457.03.15" (YMD), "15/03/1457", "15-03-1457"
4	Bare year	"1457", "769" → full-year range
5	German fuzzy	"um/ca./circa/gegen/etwa 1457", "1457 oder 1458", "zwischen X und Y", "15. Jahrhundert", "15. Jh.", "Anfang/Mitte/Ende des 15. Jahrhunderts"

On parse failure, the exception lists every format that was tried with its rejection reason — useful for spotting whether your input just needs a small reformat or a new parser.

Plug in your own format

If your data has a dialect the built-ins don't cover, pass a parser via extra_parsers=. It receives a stripped, non-empty, non-no-date string and must either return a Time / (Time, Time) or raise ValueError to mean "not my format" — exactly the contract the built-ins follow. Extra parsers run after the built-ins, so they only see strings nothing else could handle:

def julian_day(text: str) -> Time:
    if not text.startswith("JD"):
        raise ValueError("not a julian-day string")
    return Time(float(text[2:]), format="jd", scale="ut1")

dates.parse("JD2451545.0", extra_parsers=[julian_day])

Charter(date_value=...) accepts the same shapes (it delegates to parse), so this also works at construction time.

"No date" markers

Real catalogues use a small zoo of "no date" labels. parse recognises them and returns None — they're a meaningful value, not an error:

dates.parse("sine dato")    # Latin    -> None
dates.parse("s.d.")
dates.parse("ohne Datum")   # German   -> None
dates.parse("o.D.")
dates.parse("undatiert")
dates.parse("n.d.")         # English  -> None
dates.parse("undated")
dates.parse("99999999")     # MOM sentinel -> None
dates.parse("")             # empty -> None

Charter(date_value=...) delegates to parse, so any of these strings produce date_value=None (serialized as @value="99999999"). Use to_cei.dates.is_no_date(text) for an explicit predicate; the full list lives in to_cei.dates.NO_DATE_MARKERS.

Multiple issuers

Charter(
    id_text="example",
    issuers=["Konrad von Lintz", "Heinrich der Praitenvelder"],
)

Abstract as XML

When you need structured markup inside the abstract (e.g. nested persName elements), pass an lxml element instead of a string. Note that doing so currently means you must build the issuer markup into the abstract yourself — issuers= and an XML abstract are mutually exclusive at serialisation time.

from lxml import etree
from to_cei.config import CEI

abstract = CEI.abstract(
    "Konrad von Lintz beurkundet einen Vertrag mit ",
    CEI.persName("Heinrich"),
    ".",
)

Charter(id_text="example", abstract=abstract)

Image URLs (graphic_urls)

graphic_urls accepts anything from a full URL down to a bare filename — the CEI schema doesn't care, and Monasterium resolves short forms against a per-fond / per-collection base_url configured on the server. The most common new-user trap is assuming you must always supply a fully-qualified URL.

# All three are valid CEI:
Charter("1", graphic_urls="https://example.org/charters/1.jpg")  # full URL
Charter("1", graphic_urls="2024/scans/1.jpg")                    # path fragment
Charter("1", graphic_urls="1.jpg")                               # bare filename

When to use which:

• Full URL — required if the image lives somewhere outside the fond/collection's configured base_url, or if you're producing CEI for use outside Monasterium.
• Path fragment / bare filename — preferred when all images for a fond live under a common base. Monasterium joins them with the fond's base_url at display time, so you avoid hard-coding the host in every charter and the fond can be moved later without rewriting the data. Coordinate the base path with whoever administers the fond on Monasterium.

Pass a list for multiple images:

Charter("1", graphic_urls=["1_recto.jpg", "1_verso.jpg"])

Charter groups

from to_cei import Charter, CharterGroup

group = CharterGroup(
    name="Schotten OSB",
    charters=[Charter(id_text="a"), Charter(id_text="b")],
)
group.to_file("./out")

Validation

from to_cei import Charter, Validator

v = Validator()                     # downloads + caches the CEI XSD once
v.validate_cei(charter.to_xml())    # raises XMLSchemaValidationError on failure
v.is_valid_cei(charter.to_xml())    # bool variant

The XSD is cached on disk under ~/.cache/to-cei/ after the first fetch.

Field reference

See docs/fields.md for the complete table of every Charter, Seal, and CharterGroup keyword argument with the CEI element each one produces.

Develop

uv sync           # create the venv with deps
uv run pytest     # run tests
just test         # same, via the justfile