The Resource Description Framework (RDF) is a general-purpose language for representing information in the Web.
This document defines a textual syntax for RDF called Turtle that allows an RDF graph to be completely written in a compact and natural text form, with abbreviations for common usage patterns and datatypes. Turtle provides levels of compatibility with the existing N-Triples format as well as the triple pattern syntax of the SPARQL W3C Recommendation.
This document defines Turtle, the Terse RDF Triple Language, a concrete syntax for RDF ([[!RDF-CONCEPTS]]).
A Turtle document is a textual representations of an RDF graph. The following Turtle document describes the relationship between Green Goblin and Spiderman.
This example introduces many of features of the Turtle language:
@base and Relative IRIs,
@prefix and prefixed names,
predicate lists separated by ';
',
objects lists separated by ',
',
the token a
,
and literals.
The Turtle grammar for triples
is a subset of the SPARQL Query Language for RDF [[RDF-SPARQL-QUERY]] grammar for TriplesBlock
.
The two grammars share production and terminal names where possible.
The construction of an RDF graph from a Turtle document is defined in Turtle Grammar and Parsing.
A Turtle document allows writing down an RDF graph in a compact textual form. An RDF graph is made up of triples consisting of a subject, predicate and object.
Comments may be given after a '#
'' that is not part of another lexical token and continue to the end of the line.
The simplest triple statement is a sequence of (subject, predicate, object) terms, separated by whitespace and terminated by '.
' after each triple.
Often the same subject will be referenced by a number of predicates. The predicateObjectList production matches a series of predicates and objects, separated by ';
', following a subject.
This expresses a series of RDF Triples with that subject and each predicate and object allocated to one triple.
Thus, the ';
' symbol is used to repeat the subject of triples that vary only in predicate and object RDF terms.
These two examples are equivalent ways of writing the triples about Spiderman.
As with predicates often objects are repeated with the same subject and predicate. The objectList production matches a series of objects separated by ',
' following a predicate.
This expresses a series of RDF Triples with the corresponding subject and predicate and each object allocated to one triple.
Thus, the ',
' symbol is used to repeat the subject and predicate of triples that only differ in the object RDF term.
These two examples are equivalent ways of writing Spiderman's name in two languages.
There are three types of RDF Term defined in RDF Concepts: IRIs (Internationalized Resource Identifiers), literals and blank nodes. Turtle provides a number of ways of writing each.
IRIs may be written as relative or absolute IRIs or prefixed names.
Relative and absolute IRIs are enclosed in '<' and '>' and may contain numeric escape sequences (described below). For example <http://example.org/#green-goblin>
.
Relative IRIs like <#green-goblin>
are resolved relative to the current base IRI. A new base IRI can be defined using the '@base
' directive. Specifics of this operation are defined in
The token 'a
' in the predicate position of a Turtle triple represents the IRI http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#type
.
A prefixed name is a prefix label and a local part, separated by a colon ":".
A prefixed name is turned into an IRI by concatenating the IRI associated with the prefix and the local part. The '@prefix
' directive associates a prefix label with an IRI.
Subsequent '@prefix
' directives may re-map the same prefix label.
To write http://www.perceive.net/schemas/relationship/enemyOf
using a prefixed name:
http://www.perceive.net/schemas/relationship/
as rel
rel:enemyOf
which is equivalent to writing <http://www.perceive.net/schemas/relationship/enemyOf>
Prefixed names are a superset of XML QNames. They differ in that the local part of prefixed names may include:
leg:3032571
or isbn13:9780136019701
og:video:height
wgs:lat\-long
The following Turtle document contains examples of all the different ways of writing IRIs in Turtle.
Literals are used to identify values such as strings, numbers, dates.
Quoted Literals (Grammar production RDFLiteral) have a lexical form followed by a language tag, a datatype IRI, or neither.
The representation of the lexical form consists of an initial delimiter, e.g. "
(U+0022), a sequence of permitted characters or numeric escape sequence or string escape sequence, and a final delimiter.
The corresponding RDF lexical form is the characters between the delimiters, after processing any escape sequences.
If present, the language tag is preceded by a '@
' (U+0040).
If there is no language tag, there may be a datatype IRI, preceeded by '^^
' (U+005E U+005E). The datatype IRI in Turtle may be written using either an absolute IRI, a relative IRI, or prefixed name. If there is no datatype IRI and no language tag, the datatype is xsd:string
.
'\
' (U+005C) may not appear in any quoted literal except as part of an escape sequence. Other restrictions depend on the delimiter:
'
(U+0027), may not contain the characters '
, LF
(U+000A), or CR
(U+000D).
"
, may not contain the characters "
, LF
, or CR
.
'''
may not contain the sequence of characters '''
.
"""
may not contain the sequence of characters """
.
Numbers can be written like other literals with lexical form and datatype (e.g. "-5.0"^^xsd:decimal
). Turtle has a shorthand syntax for writing integer values, arbitrary precision decimal values, and double precision floating point values.
Data Type | Abbreviated | Lexical | Description |
---|---|---|---|
xsd:integer | -5 |
"-5"^^xsd:integer |
Integer values may be written as an optional sign and a series of digits. Integers match the regular expression "[+-]?[0-9]+ ". |
xsd:decimal | -5.0 |
"-5.0"^^xsd:decimal |
Arbitrary-precision decimals may be written as an optional sign, zero or more digits, a decimal point and one or more digits. Decimals match the regular expression "[+-]?[0-9]*\.[0-9]+ ". |
xsd:double | 4.2E9 |
"4.2E9"^^xsd:double |
Double-precision floating point values may be written as an optionally signed mantissa with an optional decimal point, the letter "e" or "E", and an optionally signed integer exponent. The exponent matches the regular expression "[+-]?[0-9]+ " and the mantissa one of these regular expressions: "[+-]?[0-9]+\.[0-9]+ ", "[+-]?\.[0-9]+ " or "[+-]?[0-9] ". |
Boolean values may be written as either 'true
' or 'false
' (case-sensitive) and represent RDF literals with the datatype xsd:boolean.
RDF blank nodes in Turtle are expressed as _:
followed by a blank node label which is a series of name characters.
The characters in the label are built upon PN_CHARS_BASE, liberalized as follows:
_
and digits may appear anywhere in a blank node label..
may appear anywhere except the first or last character.-
, U+00B7
, U+0300
to U+036F
and U+203F
to U+2040
are permitted anywhere except the first character.A fresh RDF blank node is allocated for each unique blank node label in a document. Repeated use of the same blank node label identifies the same RDF blank node.
In Turtle, fresh RDF blank nodes are also allocated when matching the production blankNodePropertyList and the terminal ANON. Both of these may appear in the subject or object position of a triple (see the Turtle Grammar). That subject or object is a fresh RDF blank node. This blank node also serves as the subject of the triples produced by matching the predicateObjectList production embedded in a blankNodePropertyList. The generation of these triples is described in Predicate Lists. Blank nodes are also allocated for collections described below.
The Turtle grammar allows blankNodePropertyLists to be nested.
In this case, each inner [
establishes a new subject blank node which reverts to the outer node at the ]
, and serves as the current subject for predicate object lists.
The use of predicateObjectList within a blankNodePropertyList is a common idiom for representing a series of properties of a node.
Abbreviated:
Corresponding simple triples:
RDF provides a Collection [[RDF-MT]] structure for lists of RDF nodes.
The Turtle syntax for Collections is a possibly empty list of RDF terms enclosed by ()
.
This collection represents an rdf:first
/rdf:rest
list structure with the sequence of objects of the rdf:first
statements being the order of the terms enclosed by ()
.
The (…)
syntax MUST appear in the subject or object position of a triple (see the Turtle Grammar).
The blank node at the head of the list is the subject or object of the containing triple.
This example is a Turtle translation of example 7 in the RDF/XML Syntax specification (example1.ttl):
An example of an RDF collection of two literals.
which is short for (example2.ttl):
An example of two identical triples containing literal objects containing newlines, written in plain and long literal forms. The line breaks in this example are LINE FEED characters (U+000A). (example3.ttl):
As indicated by the grammar, a collection can be either a subject or an object. This subject or object will be the novel blank node for the first object, if the collection has one or more objects, or rdf:nil
if the collection is empty.
For example,
is syntactic sugar for (noting that the blank nodes b0
, b1
and b2
do not occur anywhere else in the RDF graph):
RDF collections can be nested and can involve other syntactic forms:
is syntactic sugar for:
The SPARQL Query Language for RDF (SPARQL) [[RDF-SPARQL-QUERY]] uses a Turtle style syntax for its TriplesBlock production. This production differs from the Turtle language in that:
?
name or $
name) in any part of the triple of the form.a
'. Turtle's prefix and base declarations are case sensitive.true
' and 'false
' are case insensitive in SPARQL and case sensitive in Turtle. TrUe
is not a valid boolean value in Turtle.For further information see the Syntax for IRIs and SPARQL Grammar sections of the SPARQL query document [[RDF-SPARQL-QUERY]].
This specification defines conformance criteria for:
A conforming Turtle document is a Unicode string that conforms to the grammar and additional constraints defined in , starting with the turtleDoc
production. A Turtle document serializes an RDF graph.
A conforming Turtle parser is a system capable of reading Turtle documents on behalf of an application. It makes the serialized RDF graph, as defined in , available to the application, usually through some form of API.
The IRI that identifies the Turtle language is: http://www.w3.org/ns/formats/Turtle
This specification does not define how Turtle parsers handle non-conforming input documents.
The media type of Turtle is text/turtle
.
The content encoding of Turtle content is always UTF-8. Charset
parameters on the mime type are required until such time as the
text/
media type tree permits UTF-8 to be sent without a
charset parameter. See for the media type
registration form.
A Turtle document is a Unicode[[!UNICODE]] character string encoded in UTF-8. Unicode characters only in the range U+0000 to U+10FFFF inclusive are allowed.
White space (production WS) is used to separate two terminals which would otherwise be (mis-)recognized as one terminal. Rule names below in capitals indicate where white space is significant; these form a possible choice of terminals for constructing a Turtle parser.
White space is significant in the production String.
Comments in Turtle take the form of '#', outside an IRIREF or String, and continue to the end of line (marked by characters U+000D or U+000A) or end of file if there is no end of line after the comment marker. Comments are treated as white space.
Relative IRIs are resolved with base IRIs as per Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax [RFC3986] using only the basic algorithm in section 5.2. Neither Syntax-Based Normalization nor Scheme-Based Normalization (described in sections 6.2.2 and 6.2.3 of RFC3986) are performed. Characters additionally allowed in IRI references are treated in the same way that unreserved characters are treated in URI references, per section 6.5 of Internationalized Resource Identifiers (IRIs) [RFC3987].
The @base
directive defines the Base IRI used to resolve relative IRIs per RFC3986 section 5.1.1, "Base URI Embedded in Content".
Section 5.1.2, "Base URI from the Encapsulating Entity" defines how the In-Scope Base IRI may come from an encapsulating document, such as a SOAP envelope with an xml:base directive or a mime multipart document with a Content-Location header.
The "Retrieval URI" identified in 5.1.3, Base "URI from the Retrieval URI", is the URL from which a particular Turtle document was retrieved.
If none of the above specifies the Base URI, the default Base URI (section 5.1.4, "Default Base URI") is used.
Each @base
directive sets a new In-Scope Base URI, relative to the previous one.
There are three forms of escapes used in turtle documents:
numeric escape sequences represent Unicode code points:
Escape sequence | Unicode code point |
---|---|
'\u' hex hex hex hex | A Unicode character in the range U+0000 to U+FFFF inclusive corresponding to the value encoded by the four hexadecimal digits interpreted from most significant to least significant digit. |
'\U' hex hex hex hex hex hex hex hex | A Unicode character in the range U+0000 to U+10FFFF inclusive corresponding to the value encoded by the eight hexadecimal digits interpreted from most significant to least significant digit. |
where HEX is a hexadecimal character
HEX ::= [0-9] | [A-F] | [a-f]
string escape sequences represent the characters traditionally escaped in string literals:
Escape sequence | Unicode code point |
---|---|
'\t' | U+0009 |
'\b' | U+0008 |
'\n' | U+000A |
'\r' | U+000D |
'\f' | U+000C |
'\"' | U+0022 |
'\'' | U+0027 |
'\\' | U+005C |
reserved character escape sequences consist of a '\' followed by one of ~.-!$&'()*+,;=/?#@%_
and represent the character to the right of the '\'.
numeric escapes |
string escapes |
reserved character escapes |
|
---|---|---|---|
IRIs, used as RDF terms or as in @prefix or @base declarations | yes | no | no |
local names | no | no | yes |
Strings | yes | yes | no |
%-encoded sequences are in the character range for IRIs and are explicitly allowed in local names. These appear as a '%' followed by two hex characters and represent that same sequence of three characters. These sequences are not decoded during processing. A term written as <http://a.example/%66oo-bar>
in Turtle designates the IRI http://a.example/%66oo-bar
and not IRI http://a.example/foo-bar
. A term written as ex:%66oo-bar
with a prefix @prefix ex: <http://a.example/>
also designates the IRI http://a.example/%66oo-bar
.
The RDF Working Group proposes to make the following changes to align Turtle with SPARQL.
BASE
and PREFIX
directives in a Turtle document.Feedback, both positive and negative, is invited by sending email to mailing list public-rdf-comments@w3.org (subscribe, archives).
The EBNF used here is defined in XML 1.0 [[!EBNF-NOTATION]]. Production labels consisting of a number and a final 's', e.g. [60s], reference the production with that number in the SPARQL Query Language for RDF grammar [[RDF-SPARQL-QUERY]].
Notes:
@base
', '@prefix
', 'a
', 'true
', 'false
') are case-sensitive.
Keywords in double quotes ("BASE
", "PREFIX
") are case-insensitive.
UCHAR
and ECHAR
are case sensitive.
turtleDoc
.
ANON
::=
'[
' WS*
']
'
token allows any amount of white space and comments between []
s.
The single space version is used in the grammar for clarity.
@prefix
' and '@base
' match the pattern for LANGTAG, though neither "prefix
" nor "base
" are registered language subtags.
This specification does not define whether a quoted literal followed by either of these tokens (e.g. "A"@base
) is in the Turtle language.
The RDF Concepts and Abstract Syntax ([[!RDF-CONCEPTS]]) specification defines three types of RDF Term:
IRIs,
literals and
blank nodes.
Literals are composed of a lexical form and an optional language tag [[!BCP47]] or datatype IRI.
An extra type, prefix
, is used during parsing to map string identifiers to namespace IRIs.
This section maps a string conforming to the grammar in to a set of triples by mapping strings matching productions and lexical tokens to RDF terms or their components (e.g. language tags, lexical forms of literals). Grammar productions change the parser state and emit triples.
Parsing Turtle requires a state of five items:
baseURI
— When the base production is reached, the second rule argument, IRIREF
, is the base URI used for relative IRI resolution (test: base1 base2).namespaces
— The second and third rule arguments (PNAME_NS
and IRIREF
) in the prefixID production assign a namespace name (IRIREF
) for the prefix (PNAME_NS
). Outside of a prefixID
production, any PNAME_NS
is substituted with the namespace (test: prefix1 escapedNamespace1). Note that the prefix may be an empty string, per the PNAME_NS,
production: (PN_PREFIX)? ":"
(test: default1).bnodeLabels
— A mapping from string to blank node.curSubject
— The curSubject
is bound to the subject
production.curPredicate
— The curPredicate
is bound to the verb
production. If token matched was "a
", curPredicate
is bound to the IRI http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#type
(test: type).This table maps productions and lexical tokens to RDF terms
or components of RDF terms
listed in :
production | type | procedure |
---|---|---|
IRIREF | IRI | The characters between "<" and ">" are taken, with the numeric escape sequences unescaped, to form the unicode string of the IRI. Relative IRI resolution is performed per Section 6.3. |
PNAME_NS | prefix | When used in a prefixID or sparqlPrefix production, the prefix is the potentially empty unicode string matching the first argument of the rule is a key into the namespaces map. |
IRI | When used in a PrefixedName production, the iri is the value in the namespaces map corresponding to the first argument of the rule. | |
PNAME_LN | IRI | A potentially empty prefix is identified by the first sequence, PNAME_NS . The namespaces map MUST have a corresponding namespace . The unicode string of the IRI is formed by unescaping the reserved characters in the second argument, PN_LOCAL , and concatenating this onto the namespace . |
STRING_LITERAL_SINGLE_QUOTE | lexical form | The characters between the outermost "'"s are taken, with numeric and string escape sequences unescaped, to form the unicode string of a lexical form. |
STRING_LITERAL_QUOTE | lexical form | The characters between the outermost '"'s are taken, with numeric and string escape sequences unescaped, to form the unicode string of a lexical form. |
STRING_LITERAL_LONG_SINGLE_QUOTE | lexical form | The characters between the outermost "'''"s are taken, with numeric and string escape sequences unescaped, to form the unicode string of a lexical form. |
STRING_LITERAL_LONG_QUOTE | lexical form | The characters between the outermost '"""'s are taken, with numeric and string escape sequences unescaped, to form the unicode string of a lexical form. |
LANGTAG | language tag | The characters following the @ form the unicode string of the language tag. |
RDFLiteral | literal | The literal has a lexical form of the first rule argument, String , and either a language tag of LANGTAG or a datatype IRI of iri , depending on which rule matched the input. if neither a language tag nor a datatype IRI is provided, the literal has a datatype of xsd:string . |
INTEGER | literal | The literal has a lexical form of the input string, and a datatype of xsd:integer . |
DECIMAL | literal | The literal has a lexical form of the input string, and a datatype of xsd:decimal . |
DOUBLE | literal | The literal has a lexical form of the input string, and a datatype of xsd:double . |
BooleanLiteral | literal | The literal has a lexical form of the true or false , depending on which matched the input, and a datatype of xsd:boolean . |
BLANK_NODE_LABEL | blank node | The string matching the second argument, PN_LOCAL , is a key in bnodeLabels. If there is no corresponding blank node in the map, one is allocated. |
ANON | blank node | A blank node is generated. |
blankNodePropertyList | blank node | A blank node is generated. Note the rules for blankNodePropertyList in the next section. |
collection | blank node | For non-empty lists, a blank node is generated. Note the rules for collection in the next section. |
IRI | For empty lists, the resulting IRI is rdf:nil . Note the rules for collection in the next section. |
A Turtle document defines an RDF graph composed of set of RDF triples.
The subject
production sets the curSubject
.
The verb
production sets the curPredicate
.
Each object N
in the document produces an RDF triple: curSubject
curPredicate
N
.
Beginning the blankNodePropertyList
production records the curSubject
and curPredicate
, and sets curSubject
to a novel blank node
B
.
Finishing the blankNodePropertyList
production restores curSubject
and curPredicate
.
The node produced by matching blankNodePropertyList
is the blank node B
.
Beginning the collection
production records the curSubject
and curPredicate
.
Each object
in the collection
production has a curSubject
set to a novel blank node
B
and a curPredicate
set to rdf:first
.
For each object objectn
after the first produces a triple:objectn-1
rdf:rest
objectn
.
Finishing the collection
production creates an additional triple curSubject rdf:rest rdf:nil
. and restores curSubject
and curPredicate
The node produced by matching collection
is the first blank node B
for non-empty lists and rdf:nil
for empty lists.
The following informative example shows the semantic actions performed when parsing this Turtle document with an LALR(1) parser:
ericFoaf
to the IRI http://www.w3.org/People/Eric/ericP-foaf.rdf#
.http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/
.curSubject
the IRI http://www.w3.org/People/Eric/ericP-foaf.rdf#ericP
.curPredicate
the IRI http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/givenName
.<...rdf#ericP>
<.../givenName>
"Eric"
.curPredicate
the IRI http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/knows
.<...rdf#ericP>
<.../knows>
<...who/dan-brickley>
.<...rdf#ericP>
<.../knows>
_:1
.curSubject
and reassign to the blank node _:1
.curPredicate
.curPredicate
the IRI http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/mbox
._:1
<.../mbox>
<mailto:timbl@w3.org>
.curSubject
and curPredicate
to their saved values (<...rdf#ericP>
, <.../knows>
).<...rdf#ericP>
<.../knows>
<http://getopenid.com/amyvdh>
.HTML ([[!HTML5]]) script
tags
can be used to embed data blocks in documents. Turtle can be easily embedded in HTML this way.
<script type="text/turtle"> @prefix dc: <http://purl.org/dc/terms/> . @prefix frbr: <http://purl.org/vocab/frbr/core#> . <http://books.example.com/works/45U8QJGZSQKDH8N> a frbr:Work ; dc:creator "Wil Wheaton"@en ; dc:title "Just a Geek"@en ; frbr:realization <http://books.example.com/products/9780596007683.BOOK>, <http://books.example.com/products/9780596802189.EBOOK> . <http://books.example.com/products/9780596007683.BOOK> a frbr:Expression ; dc:type <http://books.example.com/product-types/BOOK> . <http://books.example.com/products/9780596802189.EBOOK> a frbr:Expression ; dc:type <http://books.example.com/product-types/EBOOK> . </script>
Turtle content should be placed in a script
tag with the
type
attribute set to text/turtle
. <
and >
symbols
do not need to be escaped inside of script tags. The character encoding of the embedded Turtle
will match the HTML documents encoding.
Like JavaScript, Turtle authored for HTML (text/html
) can break when used in XHTML
(application/xhtml+xml
). The solution is the same one used for JavaScript.
<script type="text/turtle"> # <![CDATA[ @prefix frbr: <http://purl.org/vocab/frbr/core#> . <http://books.example.com/works/45U8QJGZSQKDH8N> a frbr:Work . # ]]> </script>
When embedded in XHTML Turtle data blocks must be enclosed in CDATA sections. Those CDATA markers must be in Turtle comments. If the character sequence "]]>
" occurs in the document it must be escaped using strings escapes (\u005d\u0054\u003e
). This will also make Turtle safe in polyglot documents served as both text/html
and application/xhtml+xml
. Failing to use CDATA sections or escape "]]>
" may result in a non well-formed XML document.
There are no syntactic or grammar differences between parsing Turtle that has been embedded
and normal Turtle documents. A Turtle document parsed from an HTML DOM will be a stream of character data rather than a stream of UTF-8 encoded bytes. No decoding is necessary if the HTML document has already been parsed into DOM. Each script
data block is considered to be it's own Turtle document. @prefix
and @base
declarations in a Turtle data bloc are scoped to that data block and do not effect other data blocks.
The HTML lang
attribute or XHTML xml:lang
attribute have no effect on the parsing of the data blocks.
The base URI of the encapsulating HTML document provides a "Base URI Embedded in Content" per RFC3986 section 5.1.1.
The Internet Media Type / MIME Type for Turtle is "text/turtle".
It is recommended that Turtle files have the extension ".ttl" (all lowercase) on all platforms.
It is recommended that Turtle files stored on Macintosh HFS file systems be given a file type of "TEXT".
This information that follows has been submitted to the IESG for review, approval, and registration with IANA.
charset
— this parameter is required when transferring non-ASCII data. If present, the value of charset
is always UTF-8
.This work was described in the paper New Syntaxes for RDF which discusses other RDF syntaxes and the background to the Turtle (Submitted to WWW2004, referred to as N-Triples Plus there).
This work was started during the Semantic Web Advanced Development Europe (SWAD-Europe) project funded by the EU IST-7 programme IST-2001-34732 (2002-2004) and further development supported by the Institute for Learning and Research Technology at the University of Bristol, UK (2002-Sep 2005).
Other changes since the Team Submission W3C Turtle Submission 2008-01-14 . See the Previous changelog for further information
ex:first.name
.ex:7tm
.