ShEx

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ShEx - Shape Expressions
ParadigmData Validation
Designed byEric Prud'hommeaux, Iovka Boneva, Jose Emilio Labra Gayo, Gregg Kellogg, Shape Expressions W3C Community Group
Stable release
2.1 / November 21, 2018; 6 years ago (2018-11-21)
ScopeSemantic Web
Implementation languageJavaScript, Scala
Filename extensionsshex, sx
Websitewww.w3.org/community/shex/
Major implementations
shex.js,[1] Shaclex[1]
Influenced by
Turtle, SPARQL, RelaxNG
Influenced
SHACL

Shape Expressions (ShEx) [2] is a data modelling language for validating and describing a Resource Description Framework (RDF).

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

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

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 ? ? ? ? ? ? Yes ?

Online playgrounds and demos

References

  1. ^ a b Labra Gayo, Jose Emilio; Prud'hommeaux, Eric; Boneva, Iovka; Kontokostas, Dimitris (2018). Validating RDF Data. Morgan & Claypool. p. 328. ISBN 9781681731650.
  2. ^ "Shape Expressions Language 2.0". 27 March 2017.
  3. ^ "RDF Validation Workshop: Practical Assurances for Quality RDF Data".

Further reading

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

See also