My presentation about using the Freebase API that I gave at HackTO 2 in Toronto on September 25, 2010.

1. The Freebase API
Shawn Simister, September 2010

3. An entity graph of
people, places, and things.

4. 13 million entities

5. Every entity has one or more IDs

6. Each entity has one or more IDs
/en/u2
/m/0dw4g
/wikipedia/en_id/52780
/authority/facebook/u2
/authority/musicbrainz/name/ARTIST197
...

8. Entities are connected

9. … with meaningful properties

10. Approx. 400 million connections

12. Where does the data come from?

13. Freebase schema
10,448 Properties
describing ...
4,936 Types*
organized into ...
641 Domains
(~72 Commons)
*types with 10 or more instances

14. One entity, many types
Person
/people/person
Actor
/film/actor
/en/arnold_schwarzenegger Politician
/government/politician

16. Freebase Commons
American Football Cricket Language Projects
Architecture Data world Law Protected places
Astronomy Digicams Library Radio
Automotive Education Location Rail
Aviation Engineering Martial arts Religion
Awards Events Measurement unit Royalty
Baseball Fashion Media commons Soccer
Basketball Fictional universes Medicine Spaceflight
Bicycles Film Meteorology Sports
Biology Food Miltary Symbols
Boats Freebase Music Tennis
Books Games Olympics Theater
Broadcast Geology Opera Time
Business Government Organization Transportation
Celebrities Hobbies and interests People Travel
Chemistry Ice hockey Periodicals TV
Computers Influence Physical geography Video games
Conferences Internet Physics Visual arts

18. Developing applications
with Freebase data

19. REST API
http://api.freebase.com/api/service/mqlread Read structured data
http://api.freebase.com/api/service/mqlwrite Write structured data
http://api.freebase.com/api/service/search Free text search
http://api.freebase.com/api/service/topic Simplified topic data
... and more
http://www.freebase.com/docs/web_services

20. MQL
Metaweb Query Language
Rhymes with “pickle”
JSON format
Query by example

21. Querying Freebase
[{
"id" : null,
"name" : null,
"type" : "/film/film"
}]

22. Query results
[{
"id" : "/en/3_10_to_yuma_1957",
"name" : "3:10 to Yuma",
"type" : "/film/film"
},{
"id" : "/en/20_000_leagues_under_the_sea",
"name" : "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea",
"type" : "/film/film"
},{
"id" : "/en/2010_the_year_we_make_contact",
"name" : "2010: The Year We Make Contact",
"type" : "/film/film"
},
... and so on
}]

23. Querying Freebase
[{
"id" : null,
"name" : null,
"type" : "/film/film"
}]

24. Querying Freebase
[{
"id" : null,
"name" : null,
"type" : "/film/film",
"directed_by" : {
"id" : "/en/george_lucas"
}
}]

25. Querying Freebase
[{
"id" : null,
"name" : null,
"type" : "/film/film",
"directed_by" : {
"id" : "/en/george_lucas"
},
"starring" : [{
"actor" : {
"id" : "/en/harrison_ford"
}
}]
}]

26. http://freebase.com/tools/queryeditor

27. Libraries
freebase-python (best supported)
http://code.google.com/p/freebase-python
Other languages
http://wiki.freebase.com/wiki/Libraries

28. Acre

29. http://acre.freebase.com

30. Templating language
<acre:block if=”f”>
<h2>$f women with this name, including ...</h2>
<ul acre:for=”w in women”>
<li><a href=”http://www.freebase.com/view$w.id”>$w.name</a></li>
</ul>
</acre:block>
<acre:block if=”m”>
<h2>$m men with this name, including ...</h2>
<ul acre:for=”m in men”>
<li><a href=”http://www.freebase.com/view$m.id”>$m.name</a></li>
</ul>
</acre:block>
http://www.freebase.com/docs/acre_templates

36. Freebase Suggest
http://code.google.com/p/freebase-suggest/

37. Thank you
Everything you need to get started is
available in the wiki
http://wiki.freebase.com/wiki/HackTO2