Re: Progress on Ruby RDF/XML parser

On 05.07.2008, at 02:00, Tom Morris wrote:

> Just a quick note: a week or so ago, I actually got my thumb out of my
> behind and wrote an RDF/XML parser as part of my slow and meandering
> attempt at writing an RDF library in Ruby.

Great to hear that!

> On the agenda, I am planning to hopefully finish all the fiddlier bits
> of the RDF/XML spec, then rewrite whatever unit/regression tests I can
> find from other RDF/XML parsers into the current RSpec tests.
> Switching away from REXML would be nice too. I'm also planning on
> going to a local Ruby/Rails event soon, so hopefully I can get some
> smart Ruby types to peer through my code and make it better.
> Not-so-soon goals: SPARQL would be very cool, as would some
> convenience methods (perhaps done using method_missing) for OWL.

Just an idea for a feature which will probably increase in importance  
during the next year:

extracting of RDF data from HTML documents with embedded RDFa.

RDFa seems to be increasingly accepted as a generic substitute for  
microformats,
even on mainstream sites like Digg and one of the BBC sites (AFAIR).  
So it might soon be one of
the easiest ways to get public, real world RDF data.

> If I can get the current features stable, I'm also going to hopefully
> package it into a gem. I've been experimenting with building it into a
> gem on my local machine.

Building a gem is fairly easy. There are tools like hoe which can  
provide the skeleton files
for a gem, or which you can just use to create a dummy gem and then  
copy and change the gem stuff for your
project.

cheers, Benjamin. 

Received on Monday, 7 July 2008 00:51:32 UTC