Raptor RDF Parser Toolkit

Dave Beckett
Institute for Learning and Research Technology
University of Bristol

Overview

Raptor is a free software/Open Source C library that parses RDF syntaxes such as RDF/XML and N-Triples into RDF triples.

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. See the todo list for the current state information. 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.

Parsers

RDF/XML Parser

A Parser for the RDF/XML syntax as revised by the W3C RDF Core working group.

Designed to integrate well with Redland
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
Parses and generates N-Triples supporting XML literals, language tagging and datatypes
Parses content on the web if libcurl, libxml2 or BSD libfetch is available.
Handles rdf:resource / resource attributes
Uses expat and/or (GNOME) libxml XML parsers as available or required
Optional features can be selected at run time.
(Perl, Python, Java, Tcl, Ruby, PHP interfaces when used via Redland)
No memory leaks
Fast
rapper RDF parser utility program

The remaining issues are recorded in the to do list.

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

An experimental parser for the multiple XML RSS formats that use the elements such as channel, item, title, description in different ways. Turns the input where possible into RSS 1.0 RDF triples. RSS 1.0 as a full RDF vocabulary, is parsed by the RDF/XML parser.

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 get back the triples. 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://www.redland.opensource.ac.uk/dist/source/ (master site) and also from the SourceForge site. There are nightly snapshots of the development version which is can also be browsed via CVSweb.

License

This library is free software / open source software released under the LGPL or MPL 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.