Ref

A Ref is a reference to some entity. When serializing an entity (e.g. a Process) that references another standalone entity (e.g. a Flow in an Exchange) we do not want to write the complete referenced entity into the serialized JSON object but just a reference. However, the reference contains some meta-data like name, category path etc. that are useful to display.

Properties

`@type`

Inherited from Entity.@type

Type: string (external doc)
Proto-Index: 1

`@id`

Inherited from RefEntity.@id

Type: string (external doc)
Proto-Index: 2

`name`

Inherited from RefEntity.name

Type: string (external doc)
Proto-Index: 3

`description`

Inherited from RefEntity.description

Type: string (external doc)
Proto-Index: 4

`category`

The category path of the referenced entity, e.g. Elementary flows/Emissions to air/unspecified.

Type: string (external doc)
Proto-Index: 5

`refUnit`

This field is valid for references to entities which can have a (reference) unit, like flows, impact categories, or flow properties.

Type: string (external doc)
Proto-Index: 6

`location`

This field is only valid for references of processes or flows and contains the location name or code of that respective process or flow.

Type: string (external doc)
Proto-Index: 7

`flowType`

In case of a reference to a flow, this field can contain the type of flow that is referenced.

Type: FlowType
Proto-Index: 8

`processType`

In case of a reference to a process, this fiel can contain the type of process that is referenced.

Type: ProcessType
Proto-Index: 9

`library`

An identifier of a data library. This field should be only used in service APIs (like IPC, REST, gRPC, etc.) and of course only, if the referenced dataset is part of a library. For data references in data packages, the location of the referenced dataset defines if it is part of a library.

Type: string (external doc)
Proto-Index: 10

Python class stub

The snippet below shows the names of the properties of the corresponding Python class of the olca-schema package. Note that this is not the full class definition but just shows the names of the class and its properties.


@dataclass
class Ref:
  id: str
  category: str
  description: str
  flow_type: FlowType
  library: str
  location: str
  name: str
  process_type: ProcessType
  ref_unit: str

openLCA schema