Re: Question about "paths as URIs" in the BBC RDF

On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 7:56 PM, Ross Singer <rossfsinger@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi, I have a question about something I've run across when trying to
> parse the RDF coming from the BBC.  If you take a document like:
>
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/artists/72c536dc-7137-4477-a521-567eeb840fa8.rdf
>
> notice how all of the URIs are paths, but there's no xml:base to
> declare where these actual paths may reside.
>
> If I point rapper at that URI, it brings me back fully qualified URIs:
> <http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/artists/72c536dc-7137-4477-a521-567eeb840fa8#artist>
>
> but the only way I can figure it's able to do that is for the parser
> and the HTTP agent to be in cahoots somehow, which seems like a
> breakdown in the separation of concerns -- this document is useless,
> except in the context of living on www.bbc.co.uk.  The moment I cache
> it to my local system, if I'm understanding it correctly, it's now
> asserting these things about my filesystem (effectively).  Rapper now
> says:
> <file:///music/artists/72c536dc-7137-4477-a521-567eeb840fa8#artist>
>
> So my questions would be:
> 1) Is this "valid"?
> 2) If so, is there an expectation of the parser being aware of the URI
> of retrieval? (I have written my own set of parsers, so I'd need to
> rethink this assumption, if so)
> 3) How do other client libraries handle this?

Hi Ross,

The relevant specs are

http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-rdf-syntax-grammar-20040210/#section-Syntax-ID-xml-base

"The XML Infoset provides a base URI attribute xml:base that sets the
base URI for resolving relative RDF URI references, otherwise the base
URI is that of the document. The base URI applies to all RDF/XML
attributes that deal with RDF URI references which are rdf:about,
rdf:resource, rdf:ID and rdf:datatype."

http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2396.html which specifies relative URI
processing given a base URI.

I think most of what you need is in :5.1. Establishing a Base URI" there.

cheers,

Dan

Received on Thursday, 28 January 2010 20:37:25 UTC