Write software using the Open Babel library — Open Babel v2.3.0 documentation

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# Write software using the Open Babel library

Behind the obabel command line program lies a complete cheminformatics toolkit, the Open Babel library. Using this library, you can write your own custom scripts and software for yourself or others.

Note

Any software that uses the Open Babel library must abide by terms of the GNU Public License version 2. This includes all of the supporting language bindings (for example, Python scripts) as well as C++ programs. To summarise, if you are considering distributing your software to other people, you must make your source code available on request.

Open Babel is a C++ library and can easily be used from C++. In addition it can be accessed from Python, Perl, CSharp and Java. These are referred to as language bindings (the Python bindings, etc.) and they were automatically generated from the C++ library using SWIG. For Python, we also provide a module (Pybel) that makes it easier to access features of the bindings.

- The Open Babel API
- C++
  - How to use Open Babel from C++
  - Examples
- Python
  - Introduction
  - Install Python bindings
  - The openbabel module
  - Pybel
  - Pybel API
  - Examples
- Java
  - Quickstart Example
  - Installation
  - API
- Perl
  - Installation
  - Using Chemistry::OpenBabel
  - Examples
- CSharp and OBDotNet
  - Installation
  - OBDotNet API
  - Examples
- Ruby

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