Re: Using @resource instead of @about in RDFa Lite

On 16 Nov 2011, at 21:19, Niklas Lindström wrote:
> Have we considered whether @resource would be preferable over @about
> in RDFa Lite?

It's funny because I was just running into some issues that made me wish for @resource rather than @about.

@danbri set me the challenge of creating a stylesheet to map microdata into RDFa 1.1 Lite in part to easily generate some RDFa 1.1 Lite examples using schema.org markup.

The first document that I tried was http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0813715/. This contains the markup (much simplified here):

  <div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/TVSeries">
    <div itemprop="aggregateRating" 
         itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/AggregateRating">
      Ratings: 
      <strong><span itemprop="ratingValue">7.2</span></strong>
      <span class="mellow">/<span itemprop="bestRating">10</span></span> from 
      <a href="ratings" 
         title="23,201 IMDb users have given an average vote of 7.2/10">
        <span itemprop="ratingCount">23,201</span> users</a>
    </div>
  </div>

which if you were to convert to RDF using the microdata/RDF mapping that Gregg's been working on, would generate something like:

  <> md:item [ 
    a schema:TVSeries;
    schema:aggregateRating [ 
      a schema:AggregateRating;
      schema:bestRating "10";
      schema:ratingCount "23,201";
      schema:ratingValue "7.2"
    ]
  ] .

A simplistic mapping into RDFa 1.1 gives:

  <div vocab="http://schema.org/" typeof="TVSeries">
    <div property="aggregateRating" 
         vocab="http://schema.org/" typeof="AggregateRating">
      Ratings: 
      <strong><span property="ratingValue">7.2</span></strong>
      <span class="mellow">/<span property="bestRating">10</span></span> from 
      <a href="ratings" 
         title="23,201 IMDb users have given an average vote of 7.2/10">
        <span property="ratingCount">23,201</span> users</a>
    </div>
  </div>

If you run that through a RDFa parser, you get:

  [ 
    a schema:TVSeries;
    schema:aggregateRating [ 
      a schema:AggregateRating;
      schema:bestRating "10";
      schema:ratingValue "7.2"
    ]
  ] .

  <ratings> schema:ratingCount "23,201" .

What's happened? The ratingCount property is nested within a link, and the @href of the link is creating a new scope for the statements within that link, so instead of belonging to the AggregateRating, the ratingCount is a property of <ratings> (the URI of the link).

I can get around that in this case by adding a property="" to the link. However, if it had a @rel on it already, like this:

  <div vocab="http://schema.org/" typeof="TVSeries">
    <div property="aggregateRating" 
         vocab="http://schema.org/" typeof="AggregateRating">
      Ratings: 
      <strong><span property="ratingValue">7.2</span></strong>
      <span class="mellow">/<span property="bestRating">10</span></span> from 
      <a href="ratings" rel="prefetch"
         title="23,201 IMDb users have given an average vote of 7.2/10">
        <span property="ratingCount">23,201</span> users</a>
    </div>
  </div>

then that wouldn't work. In that case, I need to make sure that the subject of the ratingCount property is the aggregate rating, rather than <ratings>.

I could do that in two ways. One would be to add an @about attribute on both elements pointing to the same blank node, but in that case I'd need to create another nested <div> because if I put an @about attribute on the element with property="aggregateRating" then the subject of the triple generated by that property would be the @about. But then the property="aggregateRating" doesn't chain, so I'd have to use @rel:

  <div vocab="http://schema.org/" typeof="TVSeries">
    <div rel="aggregateRating">
      <div about="_:rating" vocab="http://schema.org/" typeof="AggregateRating">
        Ratings: 
        <strong><span property="ratingValue">7.2</span></strong>
        <span class="mellow">/<span property="bestRating">10</span></span> from 
        <a href="ratings" rel="prefetch"
           title="23,201 IMDb users have given an average vote of 7.2/10">
          <span about="_:rating" property="ratingCount">23,201</span> users</a>
      </div>
    </div>
  </div>

Or as Nicklas suggested I could use the @resource attribute. That works out a lot neater:

  <div vocab="http://schema.org/" typeof="TVSeries">
    <div property="aggregateRating" resource="_:rating"
         vocab="http://schema.org/" typeof="AggregateRating">
      Ratings: 
      <strong><span property="ratingValue">7.2</span></strong>
      <span class="mellow">/<span property="bestRating">10</span></span> from 
      <a href="ratings" rel="prefetch" resource="_:rating"
         title="23,201 IMDb users have given an average vote of 7.2/10">
        <span property="ratingCount">23,201</span> users</a>
    </div>
  </div>

Note that in neither case does the xhv:prefetch relationship make any sense whatsoever. Hopefully processors will ignore the bogus xhv:* properties.

@resource also gives a lot better mapping for @itemid. Say the microdata had an @itemid on the inner <div> like this:

  <div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/TVSeries">
    <div itemprop="aggregateRating" 
         itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/AggregateRating"
         itemid="ratings">
      Ratings: 
      <strong><span itemprop="ratingValue">7.2</span></strong>
      <span class="mellow">/<span itemprop="bestRating">10</span></span> from 
      <a href="ratings" 
         title="23,201 IMDb users have given an average vote of 7.2/10">
        <span itemprop="ratingCount">23,201</span> users</a>
    </div>
  </div>

If @resource were allowed in RDFa 1.1 Lite then I could just map the @itemid to @resource really easily:

  <div vocab="http://schema.org/" typeof="TVSeries">
    <div property="aggregateRating"
         vocab="http://schema.org/" typeof="AggregateRating"
         resource="ratings">
      Ratings: 
      <strong><span property="ratingValue">7.2</span></strong>
      <span class="mellow">/<span property="bestRating">10</span></span> from 
      <a href="ratings"
         title="23,201 IMDb users have given an average vote of 7.2/10">
        <span property="ratingCount">23,201</span> users</a>
    </div>
  </div>

So I strongly support Niklas' suggestion of using @resource rather than @about in RDFa 1.1 Lite.

Cheers,

Jeni
-- 
Jeni Tennison
http://www.jenitennison.com

Received on Wednesday, 16 November 2011 22:50:33 UTC