Java API for WordNet Searching (JAWS)

JAWS is an API that provides Java applications the ability to access WordNet. It is a simple and fast API that is compatible with both the 2.1 and 3.0 versions of the WordNet database files.

To use JAWS in your application you must do the following:

• Obtain a copy of the WordNet database files. To download them with Maven, run mvn generate-test-resources which will download WordNet 3.0 into the target/WordNet-3.0/dict directory (make sure you setup your toolchains.xml file).
• Generate a JAR file containing the compiled JAWS code. Executing mvn package will generate a JAR and put it in the target/ directory.
• Include the JAWS JAR file in your Java Virtual Machine's class path.
• Use the wordnet.database.dir system property to specify the directory where the WordNet database files are located. If you used Maven to download the files, this directory will be PROJECT_DIR/target/WordNet-3.0/dict, where PROJECT_DIR is the path to where you checked out this repository.

For an example, see the WordNetDatabaseTest.

History

JAWS was developed by Terrill Brett Spell as a class project in CSE 8337 in Spring 2007, as part of the SMU Database Research Group. Brett Spell was an adjunct member of the faculty in the Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) department at Southern Methodist University.

This repository is based on the original JAWS 1.3 source code (it's the first commit to this repository).

Building with Maven

This project uses the Maven Toolchains Plugin for more reproducible builds.

To setup a JDK toolchain, you can start by downloading a JDK from Adoptium. The long-term support (LTS) release for the JDK is 21, as of Nov 2023. Extract the JDK to a directory on your computer, which we reference as /path/to/jdk21. Finally, put the following in your ~/.m2/toolchains.xml file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF8"?>
<toolchains>
  <!-- JDK toolchains -->
  <toolchain>
    <type>jdk</type>
    <provides>
      <version>21</version>
      <vendor>openjdk</vendor>
    </provides>
    <configuration>
      <jdkHome>/path/to/jdk21</jdkHome>
    </configuration>
  </toolchain>
</toolchains>

IMPORTANT: Make sure to replace /path/to/jdk21 with the actual path to where you extracted the JDK.

References

• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5976537/wordnet-similarity-in-java-jaws-jwnl-or-java-wnsimilarity

Other JAWS repositories on GitHub

• https://github.com/fcr/JAWS
• https://github.com/ptorrestr/jaws
• https://github.com/jaytaylor/jaws