
                           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 to do list for more
   information.  Changes  can  be found in the NEWS file or more detailed
   changes in the 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.
     _________________________________________________________________

   Copyright  2000-2004 Dave Beckett, Institute for Learning and Research
   Technology, University of Bristol
