Creating RDF triples¶
Creating Nodes¶
RDF data is a graph where the nodes are URI references, Blank Nodes or Literals. In RDFLib, these node types are
represented by the classes URIRef
, BNode
, and Literal
.
URIRefs
and BNodes
can both be thought of as resources, such a person, a company, a website, etc.
A
BNode
is a node where the exact URI is not known.A
URIRef
is a node where the exact URI is knonw.URIRef
s 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. The most common literal values are XML data types, e.g. string, int…
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 Literals.
For creating many URIRefs
in the same namespace
, i.e. URIs with the same prefix, RDFLib has the 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 defines Namespaces for some common RDF/OWL schemas, including most W3C ones:
from rdflib.namespace import CSVW, DC, DCAT, DCTERMS, DOAP, FOAF, ODRL2, ORG, OWL, \
PROF, PROV, RDF, RDFS, SDO, SH, SKOS, SOSA, SSN, TIME, \
VOID, XMLNS, XSD
RDF.type
# = rdflib.term.URIRef("http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#type")
FOAF.knows
# = rdflib.term.URIRef("http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/knows")
PROF.isProfileOf
# = rdflib.term.URIRef("http://www.w3.org/ns/dx/prof/isProfileOf")
SOSA.Sensor
# = rdflib.term.URIRef("http://www.w3.org/ns/sosa/Sensor")
Adding Triples¶
We already saw in Loading and saving RDF, how triples can be added from files and online locations with with the parse()
function.
Triples can also be added within Python code directly, using the add()
function:
-
Graph.
add
(triple)[source] Add a triple with self as context
add()
takes a 3-tuple (a “triple”) of RDFLib nodes. Try the following with the nodes and namespaces we defined previously:
from rdflib import Graph
g = Graph()
g.bind("foaf", FOAF)
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").decode("utf-8"))
outputs:
@prefix foaf: <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/> .
<http://example.org/people/Bob> 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 set()
method is useful for this:
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
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 Set Operations on RDFLib Graphs.
Removing Triples¶
Similarly, triples can be removed by a call to remove()
:
-
Graph.
remove
(triple)[source] Remove a triple from the graph
If the triple does not provide a context attribute, removes the triple from all contexts.
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
):
from rdflib.namespace import FOAF
g.parse("http://danbri.livejournal.com/data/foaf")
for s, p, o in g.triples((None, FOAF['member_name'], None)):
g.add((s, FOAF['name'], o))
Note that since rdflib 5.0.0, using foaf:member_name
is somewhat prevented in rdflib since FOAF is declared as a ClosedNamespace()
class instance that has a closed set of members and foaf:member_name
isnt one of them!