Navigating Graphs¶
An RDF Graph is a set of RDF triples, and we try to mirror exactly this in RDFLib, and the graph tries to emulate a container type:
Graphs as Iterators¶
RDFLib graphs override __iter__()
in order to support iteration over the contained triples:
for subject,predicate,obj in someGraph:
if not (subject,predicate,obj) in someGraph:
raise Exception("Iterator / Container Protocols are Broken!!")
Contains check¶
Graphs implement __contains__()
, so you can check if a triple is in a graph with triple in graph
syntax:
from rdflib import URIRef
from rdflib.namespace import RDF
bob = URIRef("http://example.org/people/bob")
if ( bob, RDF.type, FOAF.Person ) in graph:
print "This graph knows that Bob is a person!"
Note that this triple does not have to be completely bound:
if (bob, None, None) in graph:
print "This graph contains triples about Bob!"
Set Operations on RDFLib Graphs¶
Graphs override several pythons operators: __iadd__()
, __isub__()
, etc. This supports addition, subtraction and other set-operations on Graphs:
operation | effect |
---|---|
G1 + G2 |
return new graph with union |
G1 += G1 |
in place union / addition |
G1 - G2 |
return new graph with difference |
G1 -= G2 |
in place difference / subtraction |
G1 & G2 |
intersection (triples in both graphs) |
G1 ^ G2 |
xor (triples in either G1 or G2, but not in both) |
Warning
Set-operations on graphs assume bnodes are shared between graphs. This may or may not do what you want. See Merging graphs for details.
Basic Triple Matching¶
Instead of iterating through all triples, RDFLib graphs support basic triple pattern matching with a triples()
function.
This function is a generator of triples that match the pattern given by the arguments. The arguments of these are RDF terms that restrict the triples that are returned. Terms that are None
are treated as a wildcard. For example:
g.load("some_foaf.rdf")
for s,p,o in g.triples( (None, RDF.type, FOAF.Person) ):
print "%s is a person"%s
for s,p,o in g.triples( (None, RDF.type, None) ):
print "%s is a %s"%(s,o)
bobgraph = Graph()
bobgraph += g.triples( (bob, None, None) )
If you are not interested in whole triples, you can get only the bits you want with the methods objects()
, subjects()
, predicates()
, predicates_objects()
, etc. Each take parameters for the components of the triple to constraint:
for person in g.subjects(RDF.type, FOAF.Person):
print "%s is a person"%person
Finally, for some properties, only one value per resource makes sense (i.e they are functional properties, or have max-cardinality of 1). The value()
method is useful for this, as it returns just a single node, not a generator:
name = g.value(bob, FOAF.name) # get any name of bob
# get the one person that knows bob and raise an exception if more are found
mbox = g.value(predicate = FOAF.name, object = bob, any = False)
Graph
methods for accessing triples¶
Here is a list of all convenience methods for querying Graphs:
-
Graph.
label
(subject, default='')[source] Query for the RDFS.label of the subject
Return default if no label exists or any label if multiple exist.
-
Graph.
preferredLabel
(subject, lang=None, default=None, labelProperties=(rdflib.term.URIRef(u'http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#prefLabel'), rdflib.term.URIRef(u'http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#label')))[source] Find the preferred label for subject.
By default prefers skos:prefLabels over rdfs:labels. In case at least one prefLabel is found returns those, else returns labels. In case a language string (e.g., ‘en’, ‘de’ or even ‘’ for no lang-tagged literals) is given, only such labels will be considered.
Return a list of (labelProp, label) pairs, where labelProp is either skos:prefLabel or rdfs:label.
>>> from rdflib import ConjunctiveGraph, URIRef, RDFS, Literal >>> from rdflib.namespace import SKOS >>> from pprint import pprint >>> g = ConjunctiveGraph() >>> u = URIRef(u'http://example.com/foo') >>> g.add([u, RDFS.label, Literal('foo')]) >>> g.add([u, RDFS.label, Literal('bar')]) >>> pprint(sorted(g.preferredLabel(u))) [(rdflib.term.URIRef(u'http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#label'), rdflib.term.Literal(u'bar')), (rdflib.term.URIRef(u'http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#label'), rdflib.term.Literal(u'foo'))] >>> g.add([u, SKOS.prefLabel, Literal('bla')]) >>> pprint(g.preferredLabel(u)) [(rdflib.term.URIRef(u'http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#prefLabel'), rdflib.term.Literal(u'bla'))] >>> g.add([u, SKOS.prefLabel, Literal('blubb', lang='en')]) >>> sorted(g.preferredLabel(u)) [(rdflib.term.URIRef(u'http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#prefLabel'), rdflib.term.Literal(u'bla')), (rdflib.term.URIRef(u'http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#prefLabel'), rdflib.term.Literal(u'blubb', lang='en'))] >>> g.preferredLabel(u, lang='') [(rdflib.term.URIRef(u'http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#prefLabel'), rdflib.term.Literal(u'bla'))] >>> pprint(g.preferredLabel(u, lang='en')) [(rdflib.term.URIRef(u'http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#prefLabel'), rdflib.term.Literal(u'blubb', lang='en'))]
-
Graph.
triples
()[source] Generator over the triple store
Returns triples that match the given triple pattern. If triple pattern does not provide a context, all contexts will be searched.
-
Graph.
value
(subject=None, predicate=rdflib.term.URIRef(u'http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#value'), object=None, default=None, any=True)[source] Get a value for a pair of two criteria
Exactly one of subject, predicate, object must be None. Useful if one knows that there may only be one value.
It is one of those situations that occur a lot, hence this ‘macro’ like utility
Parameters: subject, predicate, object – exactly one must be None default – value to be returned if no values found any – if True, return any value in the case there is more than one, else, raise UniquenessError
-
Graph.
subjects
(predicate=None, object=None)[source] A generator of subjects with the given predicate and object
-
Graph.
objects
(subject=None, predicate=None)[source] A generator of objects with the given subject and predicate
-
Graph.
predicates
(subject=None, object=None)[source] A generator of predicates with the given subject and object
-
Graph.
subject_objects
(predicate=None)[source] A generator of (subject, object) tuples for the given predicate
-
Graph.
subject_predicates
(object=None)[source] A generator of (subject, predicate) tuples for the given object
-
Graph.
predicate_objects
(subject=None)[source] A generator of (predicate, object) tuples for the given subject