.. _intro_to_creating_rdf:
====================
Creating RDF triples
====================
Creating Nodes
--------------
RDF is a graph where the nodes are URI references, Blank Nodes or Literals, in RDFLib represented by the classes :class:`~rdflib.term.URIRef`, :class:`~rdflib.term.BNode`, and :class:`~rdflib.term.Literal`. ``URIRefs`` and ``BNodes`` can both be thought of as resources, such a person, a company, a web-site, etc.
A ``BNode`` is a node where the exact URI is not known.
``URIRefs`` are also used to represent the properties/predicates in the RDF graph.
``Literals`` represent attribute values, such as a name, a date, a number, etc.
Nodes can be created by the constructors of the node classes::
from rdflib import URIRef, BNode, Literal
bob = URIRef("http://example.org/people/Bob")
linda = BNode() # a GUID is generated
name = Literal('Bob') # passing a string
age = Literal(24) # passing a python int
height = Literal(76.5) # passing a python float
Literals can be created from python objects, this creates ``data-typed literals``, for the details on the mapping see :ref:`rdflibliterals`.
For creating many ``URIRefs`` in the same ``namespace``, i.e. URIs with the same prefix, RDFLib has the :class:`rdflib.namespace.Namespace` class::
from rdflib import Namespace
n = Namespace("http://example.org/people/")
n.bob # = rdflib.term.URIRef(u'http://example.org/people/bob')
n.eve # = rdflib.term.URIRef(u'http://example.org/people/eve')
This is very useful for schemas where all properties and classes have the same URI prefix, RDFLib pre-defines Namespaces for the most common RDF schemas::
from rdflib.namespace import RDF, FOAF
RDF.type
# = rdflib.term.URIRef(u'http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#type')
FOAF.knows
# = rdflib.term.URIRef(u'http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/knows')
Adding Triples
--------------
We already saw in :doc:`intro_to_parsing`, how triples can be added with with the :meth:`~rdflib.graph.Graph.parse` function.
Triples can also be added with the :meth:`~rdflib.graph.Graph.add` function:
.. automethod:: rdflib.graph.Graph.add
:noindex:
:meth:`~rdflib.graph.Graph.add` takes a 3-tuple of RDFLib nodes. Try the following with the nodes and namespaces we defined previously::
from rdflib import Graph
g = Graph()
g.add( (bob, RDF.type, FOAF.Person) )
g.add( (bob, FOAF.name, name) )
g.add( (bob, FOAF.knows, linda) )
g.add( (linda, RDF.type, FOAF.Person) )
g.add( (linda, FOAF.name, Literal('Linda') ) )
print g.serialize(format='turtle')
outputs:
.. code-block:: n3
@prefix foaf: .
@prefix rdf: .
@prefix rdfs: .
@prefix xml: .
a foaf:Person ;
foaf:knows [ a foaf:Person ;
foaf:name "Linda" ] ;
foaf:name "Bob" .
For some properties, only one value per resource makes sense (i.e they are *functional properties*, or have max-cardinality of 1). The :meth:`~rdflib.graph.Graph.set` method is useful for this:
.. code-block:: python
g.add( ( bob, FOAF.age, Literal(42) ) )
print "Bob is ", g.value( bob, FOAF.age )
# prints: Bob is 42
g.set( ( bob, FOAF.age, Literal(43) ) ) # replaces 42 set above
print "Bob is now ", g.value( bob, FOAF.age )
# prints: Bob is now 43
:meth:`rdflib.graph.Graph.value` is the matching query method, it will return a single value for a property, optionally raising an exception if there are more.
You can also add triples by combining entire graphs, see :ref:`graph-setops`.
Removing Triples
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Similarly, triples can be removed by a call to :meth:`~rdflib.graph.Graph.remove`:
.. automethod:: rdflib.graph.Graph.remove
:noindex:
When removing, it is possible to leave parts of the triple unspecified (i.e. passing ``None``), this will remove all matching triples::
g.remove( (bob, None, None) ) # remove all triples about bob
An example
^^^^^^^^^^
LiveJournal produces FOAF data for their users, but they seem to use
``foaf:member_name`` for a person's full name. To align with data from
other sources, it would be nice to have ``foaf:name`` act as a synonym
for ``foaf:member_name`` (a poor man's one-way
``owl:equivalentProperty``):
.. code-block:: python
from rdflib.namespace import FOAF
g.parse("http://danbri.livejournal.com/data/foaf")
for s,_,n in g.triples((None, FOAF['member_name'], None)):
g.add((s, FOAF['name'], n))