NAME

RDF::Sesame - Interact with Sesame RDF servers

SYNOPSIS

 use RDF::Sesame;
 
 # Connect anonymously to Sesame on localhost port 80
 my $sesame = RDF::Sesame->connect;
 
 # or anonymously on a remote Sesame server
 $sesame = RDF::Sesame->connect('openrdf.org');
 
 # or explicitly specify the options
 $sesame = RDF::Sesame->connect(
    host      => "openrdf.org",
    port      => 80
    directory => "sesame",
    username  => "testuser",
    password  => "opensesame"
 ) or die "Couldn't connect to Sesame : $RDF::Sesame::errstr\n";
 
 # or explicitly specify using a single URI
 $sesame = RDF::Sesame->connect(
    uri => 'http://testuser:opensesame@openrdf.org:80/sesame'
 );
 
 my @repos = $sesame->repositories;
 
 # open a repository the easy way
 my $vcard  = $sesame->open("vcard");
 
 # or the more flexible way (allowing other named options)
 my $museum = $sesame->open(id => "museum");
 
 my $serql = <<END;
    select x, given, family
    from
     {x} vCard:N {n},
     {n} vCard:Given  {given};
         vCard:Family {family}
    using namespace
      vCard = <http://www.w3.org/2001/vcard-rdf/3.0#>
 END
 
 my $results = $vcard->select(
     query    => $serql,
     language => "SeRQL"
 );
 
 $vcard->query_language("SeRQL");
 $results = $vcard->select($serql);
 
 # $results is a Data::Table object (via RDF::Sesame::TableResults)

DESCRIPTION

The RDF::Sesame module implements a wrapper around the RESTful API (HTTP protocol) provided by Sesame http://openrdf.org. It facilitates connecting, adding data and querying a Sesame server from Perl.

RDF::Sesame itself only provides a method for creating a Connection object. See the documentation for RDF::Sesame::Connection, RDF::Sesame::Repository, and RDF::Sesame::TableResults.

STATUS

This module is in beta testing. The algorithms have been tested thoroughly and are stable. The API might change in a few particulars, hopefully in a backwards-compatible manner.

METHODS

connect ( %opts )

Connects to a Sesame server and creates an instance of an RDF::Sesame::Connection object. This object can be used to create an RDF::Sesame::Repository object or (less likely) to execute commands against a Sesame server. Creating an RDF::Sesame::Repository object is the preferred way, so do that.

The HTTP connection to the server is created with Keep-Alive enabled in an attempt to make consecutive requests speedier.

The %opts parameter is a hash of options to use when creating the connection. Below is a list of the currently understood options. If a single scalar is provided to connect(), it will be treated as the host and all other options will use the default values.

host

The host name or address of the sesame server. For example 'openrdf.org' or 'openrdf.org:8080'. It's not a URI.

Default: localhost

port

The port number on which the Sesame server is listening.

Default: 80

directory

The sesame directory on the host. The directory should be specified without leading or trailing '/' characters. However, if those characters are provided, they will be stripped before further processing.

Default: sesame

username

The username to use for logging in to the server. If this option is not specified (or undef), no login will be attempted and only publicly available repositories will be visible.

password

The password to use for logging in to the server. If this option is not supplied but the 'username' option is specified, a password consisting of the empty string will be used to log in.

uri

A URI specifying how to connect to the Sesame server. All of the above options may be specified at once by providing them in the URI in standard format. Here is an example URI

 http://username:password@host:port/directory

If any of the parts are not specified, the defaults explained above will be used instead.

timeout

When communicating with the Sesame server, RDF::Sesame usually waits 10 seconds for the server to respond. If there is no response within that time, the server is considered unreachable. This option allows you to change this behavior.

CONFIGURATION AND ENVIRONMENT

RDF::Sesame can generate very limited debugging/profiling output. By setting the environment variable RDFSESAME_DEBUG to a true value, each request to the Sesame server will generate a message on STDERR. Here is a short sample:

   Command 0 : Ran login in 30 ms
   Command 1 : Ran evaluateTableQuery in 45 ms
   Command 2 : Ran evaluateTableQuery in 120 ms

The time value generated with each message is the number of milliseconds it took to process the command including network time, database processing time and response processing time.

COMPATIBILITY

The following table indicates RDF::Sesame's compatibility with different versions of Sesame and different sail implementations.

  Sesame 1.2.6 : native - OK
                 memory - OK
  Sesame 1.2.4 : native - OK
                 memory - OK
  Sesame 1.2.3 : native - OK
                 memory - OK
  Sesame 1.2.2 : native - OK
                 memory - OK
  Sesame 1.2.1 : native - OK
                 memory - OK
  Sesame 1.2   : native - FAIL (known bug)
                 memory - OK
  Sesame 1.1.3 : native - OK
                 memory - OK

I've not personally tested Sesame versions earlier than 1.1.3 but they may work.

COVERAGE

Test coverage results provided by Devel::Cover

 ----------------------------------- ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------
 File                                  stmt   bran   cond    sub   time  total
 ----------------------------------- ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------
 lib/RDF/Sesame.pm                    100.0    n/a    n/a  100.0    1.1  100.0
 lib/RDF/Sesame/Connection.pm         100.0  100.0  100.0  100.0   20.5  100.0
 lib/RDF/Sesame/Repository.pm          96.7   95.9    n/a  100.0    9.0   96.7
 lib/RDF/Sesame/Response.pm           100.0  100.0    n/a  100.0   46.4  100.0
 lib/RDF/Sesame/TableResult.pm         91.2   82.4    n/a  100.0   23.0   88.7
 Total                                 96.2   92.2  100.0  100.0  100.0   95.4
 ----------------------------------- ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------

HELPING OUT

The latest source code for RDF-Sesame is available with git from git://ndrix.com/RDF-Sesame. You may also browse the repository at http://git.ndrix.com/?p=RDF-Sesame;a=summary.

Please email patches to the author.

SEE ALSO

RDF::Sesame::Connection

RDF::Sesame::Repository

RDF::Sesame::TableResult

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Southwest Counseling Service for sponsoring the initial development http://swcounseling.org.

AUTHOR

Michael Hendricks <michael@ndrix.com>

LICENSE AND COPYRIGHT

Copyright (c) 2005-2006 Michael Hendricks (<michael@ndrix.com>). All rights reserved.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

cpanm RDF::Sesame

perl -MCPAN -e shell
install RDF::Sesame