Summary
Shape Expressions (ShEx) [2] is a data modelling language for validating and describing a Resource Description Framework (RDF).
 | |
| Paradigm | Data Validation |
|---|---|
| Designed by | Eric Prud'hommeaux, Iovka Boneva, Jose Emilio Labra Gayo, Gregg Kellogg, Shape Expressions W3C Community Group |
| Stable release | 2.1
/ November 21, 2018 |
| Scope | Semantic Web |
| Implementation language | JavaScript, Scala |
| Filename extensions | shex, sx |
| Website | www |
| Major implementations | |
| shex.js,[1] Shaclex[1] | |
| Influenced by | |
| Turtle, SPARQL, RelaxNG | |
| Influenced | |
| SHACL | |
It was proposed at the 2012 RDF Validation Workshop[3] as a high-level, concise language for RDF validation.
The shapes can be defined in a human-friendly compact syntax called ShExC or using any RDF serialization formats like JSON-LD or Turtle.
ShEx expressions can be used both to describe RDF and to automatically check the conformance of RDF data. The syntax of ShEx is similar to Turtle and SPARQL while the semantics is inspired by regular expression languages like RelaxNG.
Example edit
PREFIX : <http://example.org/>
PREFIX schema: <http://schema.org/>
PREFIX xsd: <http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#>
:Person {
schema:name xsd:string ;
schema:knows @:Person * ;
}
The previous example declares that nodes conforming to shape Person must have one property schema:name with a string value and zero or more properties schema:knows whose values must conform with shape Person.
Implementations edit
| Project | Programming language | Version | Latest release | Compatible ShEx version | Features | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| value checking | cardinality | manifest shapemap | imports | external shapes | annotations | semantic actions | |||||
| ShEx.ex | Elixir | v0.1.4 | 2020-10-13 | ? | ? | ? | ? | no | no | no | no |
| Ruby ShEx | Ruby | 0.7.1 | 2022-01-29 | 2.0 | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | yes |
| shexjava | Java | none | none | 2.0 | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| PyShEx | Python | v0.8.1 | 2022-04-14 | 2.0 | yes | yes | no | no | ? | ? | ? |
| entityshape | Python | 0.0.2 | 2023-06-24 | ? | yes | yes | no | no | no | no | no |
| shaclex | Scala | 0.1.70 | 2020-11-02 | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| shex.js | JavaScript | v1.0.0-alpha.26 | 2023-04-25 | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? |
Online playgrounds and demos edit
- ShExSimple: Online demo based on shex.js
- rdfshape: online demo based on shaclex Archived 2018-11-19 at the Wayback Machine
References edit
Further reading edit
- Specification
- Prud'hommeaux, Eric; Boneva, Iovka; Labra Gayo, Jose Emilio; Kellogg, Gregg, eds. (2018). Shape Expressions Language Specification. W3C Draft Community Group Report.
- Labra Gayo, Jose Emilio; Prud'hommeaux, Eric; Boneva, Iovka; Kontokostas, Dimitris (2018). Validating RDF Data. Morgan & Claypool.
- Other
- Thornton, Katherine; Solbrig, Harold; Stupp, Gregory S.; Labra Gayo, Jose Emilio; Mietchen, Daniel; Prud'hommeaux, Eric; Waagmeester, Andra (2018-04-07). "Using Shape Expressions (Shex) To Share Rdf Data Models And To Guide Curation With Rigorous Validation". doi:10.5281/ZENODO.1214521.
{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires|journal=(help) - Katherine, Thornton. "Using ShEx to Investigate Data about Software and File Formats in Wikidata | Software Preservation Network (SPN)". www.softwarepreservationnetwork.org. Retrieved 2023-06-24.