sublime-dbpedia-lookup

A Sublime Text 4 plugin for the DBpedia Lookup service.

Install in Sublime Text 4

Copy DBpediaLookup.sublime-package into Sublime Text's Installed Packages directory and restart Sublime Text. On macOS, the directory is ~/Library/Application Support/Sublime Text/Installed Packages/.

Use case

This plugin provides quick context lookups while reading or editing a text. Select a phrase, or place the cursor on a word, and run DBpedia Lookup. The plugin searches the DBpedia Lookup service and displays matching resources and their indexed properties in a reusable scratch view.

Usage

The plugin provides a command in the context menu:

• Right-click a selection and choose DBpedia Lookup to search the selection.
• Right-click at a word and choose DBpedia Lookup to search that word.

Results appear as a YAML document in a scratch view named DBpedia Lookup. Resource URIs are shown with each label and are clickable in Sublime Text; other fields supplied by the server are included as YAML values.

Server configuration

By default, the plugin uses the public demo endpoint at https://lookup.dbpedia.org, see their search page for documentation.

However, it is also possible to use your own, local endpoint for search. This way you can keep your searches private or use different search indexes. To use your own endpoint, change default_server to local in the user settings and enter the base URL of your local endpoint. The default local base URL is http://localhost:8082.

Using a local endpoint

The source repository for the lookup application is DBpedia Lookup - Generic RDF Indexer & Searcher. There is also an updated dbpedia/lookup Docker image for Docker, Podman available.

The source repository provides a docker-compose file that shows how to use the lookup app with raw data that gets indexed before it can used for search. However, you can also use pre-generated indexes from the dbpedia project.

To find available index data, go to https://databus.dbpedia.org/ and search for lookup. An example index would be https://databus.dbpedia.org/fhofer/collections/dbpedia-lookup-data.

Example deployment:

docker-compose.yml
data/
	config.yml
	index/
		_3s0_Lucene99_0.tim 
		...

Docker compose example:

version: "3.0"
services:
  lookup:
    image: "dbpedia/lookup:dev"
    ports:
      - 8082:8082
    environment:
      CONFIG_PATH: /resources/config.yml
    volumes:
      - ./data/:/resources/

Quickstart:

1. Uncompress the the contents of the downloded index of yor choice into the data/index folder
2. Copy the config.yml from the source repositories' examples folder into your data folder
3. Change the indexPath in config.yml to /resources/index
4. Run docker|podman compose up -d

The plugin sends requests to /api/search at the configured base URL.

To check the API manually once the service is ready:

curl 'http://localhost:8082/api/search?query=Berlin&maxResults=5'

Details

Check server.md for detailed configuration and change config.yml accordingly.

The API returns search documents under docs. The instance returns fields such as id, label, typeName, type, category, refCount, and score as lists; available fields depend on the index configuration. The plugin uses id as the resource URI and displays the other returned fields.

Development and testing

1. Make sure the dbpedia/lookup service is running and its index is ready.
2. In Sublime Text 4, install or symlink this repository as a package, then select Berlin in a text file and run DBpedia Lookup from the context menu.
3. Repeat with the cursor inside a word and confirm that results appear in the DBpedia Lookup scratch view.
4. Set default_server to local and confirm the request reaches the LAN service. Also try a term with no matches and verify the status message.

For local service checks, use the published Docker image; do not build the DBpedia Lookup image.

Limitations

Results depend on the fields present in the server's configured index. The plugin displays available fields without assuming that every preset provides the same metadata.

License

This plugin is available under the MIT License.