Re: RDF.rb and format discovery

Hello,

I think this is something that RDF.rb should be doing automatically for you.
At the moment, the RDF::Graph.load() method is pretty dumb.

There is a ticket open to implement a better HTTP client:
http://github.com/bendiken/rdf/issues/issue/12

Do you think that covers your problem?

nick.

On 30/06/2010 10:03, "Hellekin O. Wolf" <hellekin@cepheide.org> wrote:

> Hi, 
> 
> I was looking into supporting more formats for FOAFSSL-ruby, including
> the recently released rdf-rdfa and rdf-n3 gems.
> 
> But what I found looks like hell:
> 
>  - there doesn't seem to be a reliable way of discovering the FOAF
> file format,
>  - different formats will fail with different errors,
>  - when no format is given, RDF::Graph won't detect the right one (and
> give unpredictable results)
> 
> The original way of doing it in FOAFSSL-ruby is to try it, and
> fallback to a different format on failure.  It works, but it's so ugly
> my grand-mother died.  When I tried to add new formats, I had to find
> another solution.
> 
> I went for the following (ugly) algorithm (now, my grand-mother is
> already dead):
> 
>  1. lookup the file extension in the given WebID
>  2. lookup the Content-Type after an HTTP HEAD to the WebID
>  3. GET the file and identify it from its contents
>  4. fail if the format isn't known by now.
> 
> That gives a pretty good image of a house of cards, if any.
> 
> Any idea how to deal properly with auto-discovery of formats?
> 
> ==
> hk
> 


nick.


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Received on Wednesday, 30 June 2010 10:32:47 UTC