LibSBML is an open-source software library that provides an application programming interface (API) for the SBML (Systems Biology Markup Language [1][2][3]) format.
The core of libSBML is written in ISO standard C++; the library provides API for many programming languages via interfaces generated with the help of SWIG.
This representation was chosen because of its simplicity, widespread familiarity and use in applications such as GEPASI[4] and Jarnac,[5] whose authors contributed to the initial design of SBML.
Rather than growing the simple C-like syntax into something more complicated and esoteric in order to support these features, and consequently having to manage two standards in two different formats (XML and text string formulas), SBML Levels 2 and 3 leverage an existing standard for expressing mathematical formulas, namely the content portion of MathML.
LibSBML goes one step further by allowing programmers to work exclusively with infix formula strings and instantly convert them to the appropriate MathML whenever needed.
The following is an example written in Python: The libSBML API allows easy creation of objects and subobjects representing SBML elements and the subelements contained within them.