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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
  <title>Raptor RDF Parser Toolkit</title>
</head>
<body>

<h1 style="text-align:center">Raptor RDF Parser Toolkit</h1>
<h2 style="text-align:center"><a href="http://purl.org/net/dajobe/">Dave Beckett</a><br /><a href="http://www.ilrt.bristol.ac.uk/">Institute for Learning and Research Technology</a><br /><a href="http://www.bristol.ac.uk/">University of Bristol</a></h2>
  

<h2>Overview</h2>

<p><a href="http://www.redland.opensource.ac.uk/raptor/">Raptor</a>
is a free software/Open Source C library that parses RDF syntaxes
such as RDF/XML and N-Triples into RDF triples.</p>

<p>Raptor
was designed to work closely with the
<a href="http://www.redland.opensource.ac.uk/">Redland RDF library</a>
(<b>R</b>DF <b>P</b>arser <b>T</b>oolkit f<b>o</b>r <b>R</b>edland)
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.
</p>

<p>This is a mature and stable library.
See the <a href="TODO.html">todo list</a>
for the current state information.  A summary
of the changes can be found in the <a href="NEWS.html">NEWS</a> file,
detailed API changes in the <a href="RELEASE.html">release notes</a>
and file-by-file changes in the CVS <a href="ChangeLog">ChangeLog</a>.</p>


<h2>Parsers</h2>

<h3>RDF/XML Parser</h3>

<p>A Parser for the
<a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-syntax-grammar/">RDF/XML syntax</a>
as revised by the
<a href="http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/RDFCore/">W3C RDF Core working group</a>.</p>

<ul>
<li>Designed to integrate well with <a href="http://www.redland.opensource.ac.uk/">Redland</a></li>
<li>Fully handles the <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-syntax-grammar/">RDF/XML syntax updates</a> for <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlbase/">XML Base</a>, <code>xml:lang</code>, RDF datatyping and Collections.</li>
<li>Handles all RDF vocabularies such as <a href="http://www.foaf-project.org/">FOAF</a>, <a href="http://www.purl.org/rss/1.0/">RSS 1.0</a>, <a href="http://dublincore.org/">Dublin Core</a>, <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-features/">OWL</a></li>
<li>Parses and generates <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-testcases/#ntriples">N-Triples</a> supporting XML literals, language tagging and datatypes</li>
<li>Parses content on the web if <a href="http://curl.haxx.se/libcurl/">libcurl</a>, <a href="http://xmlsoft.org/">libxml2</a> or BSD libfetch is available.</li>
<li>Handles <code>rdf:resource</code> / <code>resource</code> attributes</li>
<li>Uses <a href="http://expat.sourceforge.net/">expat</a> and/or (GNOME) <a href="http://xmlsoft.org/">libxml</a> XML parsers as available or required</li>
<li>Optional features can be selected at run time.</li>
<li>(Perl, Python, Java, Tcl, Ruby, PHP interfaces when used via Redland)</li>
<li>No memory leaks</li>
<li>Fast</li>
<li><a href="rapper.html">rapper</a> RDF parser utility program</li>
</ul>

<p>The remaining issues are recorded in the
<a href="TODO.html">to do list</a>.</p>


<h3>N-Triples Parser</h3>

<p>A parser for the
<a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-testcases/#ntriples">N-Triples</a>
syntax as used by the 
<a href="http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/RDFCore/">W3C RDF Core working group</a>
for the <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-testcases/">RDF Test Cases</a>.
</p>


<h3>Turtle Parser</h3>

<p>A parser for the
<a href="http://www.ilrt.bristol.ac.uk/discovery/2004/01/turtle/">Turtle Terse RDF Triple Language</a>
syntax, designed as a useful subset of
<a href="http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Notation3">Notation 3</a>.
</p>


<h3>RSS "tag soup" parser</h3>

<p>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
<a href="http://www.purl.org/rss/1.0/">RSS 1.0</a>
RDF triples.  <a href="http://www.purl.org/rss/1.0/">RSS 1.0</a>
as a full RDF vocabulary, is parsed by the RDF/XML parser.
</p>


<h2>Documentation</h2>

<p>The public API is described in the
<a href="libraptor.html">libraptor.3</a> UNIX manual page.
It is demonstrated in the
<a href="rapper.html">rapper</a>
utility program which shows how to call the parser and get back the
triples.  When Raptor is used inside
<a href="http://www.redland.opensource.ac.uk/">Redland</a>,
the Redland documentation explains
how to call the parser and contains several example programs.
There are also further examples in the <tt>example</tt> directory
of the distribution.</p>

<p>To install Raptor see the <a href="INSTALL.html">Installation document</a>.
</p>

<h2>Sources</h2>

<p>The packaged sources are available from
<a href="http://www.redland.opensource.ac.uk/dist/source/">http://www.redland.opensource.ac.uk/dist/source/</a> (master site) and also from the
<a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/librdf/">SourceForge site</a>.
There are 
<a href="http://www.redland.opensource.ac.uk/dist/snapshots/source/">nightly snapshots</a> of the development version which is can also be browsed via
<a href="http://cvs.ilrt.org/cvsweb/redland/raptor/">CVSweb</a>.
</p>


<h2>License</h2>

<p>This library is free software / open source software released
under the LGPL or MPL licenses.  See 
<a href="LICENSE.html">LICENSE.html</a> for full details.</p>


<h2>Mailing Lists</h2>

<p>The
<a href="http://www.redland.opensource.ac.uk/lists/">Redland mailing lists</a>
discusses the development and use of Raptor and Redland as well as
future plans and announcement of releases.</p>

<hr />

<p>Copyright 2000-2004 <a href="http://purl.org/net/dajobe/">Dave Beckett</a>, <a href="http://www.ilrt.bristol.ac.uk/">Institute for Learning and Research Technology</a>, <a href="http://www.bristol.ac.uk/">University of Bristol</a></p>

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