#DOAP
Raptor RDF Parser Toolkit
Dave Beckett
Overview
Raptor is a free software / Open Source C library that provides a set
of parsers and serializers that generate Resource Description
Framework (RDF) triples by parsing syntaxes or serialize the triples
into a syntax. The supported parsing syntaxes are RDF/XML, N-Triples,
Turtle, RSS tag soup including Atom 1.0 and 0.3, GRDDL for XHTML and
XML. The serializing syntaxes are RDF/XML (regular, and abbreviated),
N-Triples, RSS 1.0, Atom 1.0 and Adobe XMP.
Raptor was designed to work closely with the Redland RDF library (RDF
Parser Toolkit for Redland) but is entirely separate. It is a portable
library that works across many POSIX systems (Unix, GNU/Linux, BSDs,
OSX, cygwin, win32). Raptor has no memory leaks and is fast.
This is a mature and stable library. A summary of the changes can be
found in the NEWS file, detailed API changes in the release notes and
file-by-file changes in the CVS ChangeLog.
* Designed to integrate well with Redland
* Parses content on the web if libcurl, libxml2 or BSD libfetch is
available.
* Supports all RDF terms including datatyped and XML literals
* Optional features including parsers and serialisers can be
selected at configure time.
* C#, Java, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Tcl interfaces when used via
Redland
* No memory leaks
* Fast
* Standalone rapper RDF parser utility program
Known bugs and issues are recorded in the Redland issue tracker.
Parsers
RDF/XML Parser
A Parser for the standard RDF/XML syntax as revised by the W3C RDF
Core working group.
* Fully handles the RDF/XML syntax updates for XML Base, xml:lang,
RDF datatyping and Collections.
* Handles all RDF vocabularies such as FOAF, RSS 1.0, Dublin Core,
OWL, DOAP
* Handles rdf:resource / resource attributes
* Uses expat and/or (GNOME) libxml XML parsers as available or
required
N-Triples Parser
A parser for the N-Triples syntax as used by the W3C RDF Core working
group for the RDF Test Cases.
Turtle Parser
A parser for the Turtle Terse RDF Triple Language syntax, designed as
a useful subset of Notation 3.
RSS "tag soup" parser
A parser for the multiple XML RSS formats that use the elements such
as channel, item, title, description in different ways. Attempts to
turn the input into RSS 1.0 RDF triples. True RSS 1.0, as a full RDF
vocabulary, is best parsed by the RDF/XML parser. It also generates
triples for RSS enclosures.
This parser also provides support for the Atom 1.0 syndication format
defined in IETF RFC 4287
GRDDL parser
A parser for Gleaning Resource Descriptions from Dialects of Languages
(GRDDL) which allows reading XHTML and XML as RDF triples by using
profiles in the document that declare XSLT transforms from the
XHTML/XML content into RDF/XML which is the RDF content.
The parser does not support all the GRDDL styles, for example
dataview:namespaceTransformation, or perform recursive
transformations.
Serializers
RDF/XML Serializer
A serializer to the standard RDF/XML syntax as revised by the W3C RDF
Core working group. This writes a plain triple-based RDF/XML
serialization with no optimisation or pretty-printing.
A second serializer is provided using several of the RDF/XML
abbreviations to provide a more compact readable format, at the cost
of some pre-processing. This is suitable for small documents.
N-Triples Serializer
A serializer to the N-Triples syntax as used by the W3C RDF Core
working group for the RDF Test Cases.
RSS 1.0 Serializer
A serializer to the RDF Site Summary (RSS) 1.0 format.
Atom 1.0 Serializer
A serializer to the Atom 1.0 syndication format defined in IETF RFC
4287
Adobe XMP Serializer
An alpha quality serializer to the Adobe XMP profile of RDF/XML
suitable for embedding inside an external document.
Documentation
The public API is described in the libraptor.3 UNIX manual page. It is
demonstrated in the rapper utility program which shows how to call the
parser and write the triples in a serialization. When Raptor is used
inside Redland, the Redland documentation explains how to call the
parser and contains several example programs. There are also further
examples in the example directory of the distribution.
To install Raptor see the Installation document.
Sources
The packaged sources are available from
http://download.librdf.org/source/ (master site) and also from the
SourceForge site. The development Subversion sources can also be
browsed with ViewCV.
License
This library is free software / open source software released under
the LGPL (GPL) or Apache 2.0 licenses. See LICENSE.html for full
details.
Mailing Lists
The Redland mailing lists discusses the development and use of Raptor
and Redland as well as future plans and announcement of releases.
_________________________________________________________________
Copyright (C) 2000-2006 Dave Beckett
Copyright (C) 2000-2005 University of Bristol