2011-07-03

RDFa in action

RDFa is a way how to exchange structured data inside of HTML documents. RDFa provides information that is formalized enough for computers (such as googlebot) to process it in an automated way. RDFa is a complete serialization of RDF, using the attribute = value pairs to embed data into HTML documents in a way that does not affect their visual display. RDFa is a hack built on top of HTML. It repurposes some of the standard HTML attributes (such as href, src or rel) and adds new ones (such as property, about or typeof) to enrich HTML with semantic mark-up.

A good way to start with RDFa is to read through some of the documents, such as the RDFa Primer or even the RDFa specification. When you want to annotate an HTML document with RDFa you might want to go through a series of steps. We have used this workflow during an RDFa workshop I have helped to organize and this recipe worked quite well. Here it is.

  1. Find out what do you want to describe (e.g., your personal profile).
  2. Find which RDF vocabularies can be used to express description of such a thing (e.g., FOAF). There are multiple ways how to discover suitable vocabularies, some of which are listed at the W3C website for Ontology Dowsing.
  3. Start editting your HTML: either the static files or dynamically rendered templates.
  4. Start at the first line of your document and set the correct DOCTYPE. If you are using XHTML, use <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML+RDFa 1.0//EN" "http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/DTD/xhtml-rdfa-1.dtd"> (i.e., RDFa 1.0). If you are using HTML5, use <!doctype html> (i.e., RDFa 1.1). This will allow you to validate your document and see if you are using RDFa correctly.
  5. Refer to the used RDF vocabularies. By declaring vocabularies' namespaces you can set up variables that you can use in compact URIs. If you are using XHTML, use the xmlns attribute (e.g., xmlns:dv="http://rdf.data-vocabulary.org/#"). If you are using HTML5, use prefix, vocab, or profile attributes (e.g., prefix="dv: http://rdf.data-vocabulary.org/#").
  6. Identify the thing you want to describe. Use a URI as a name for the thing so that others can link to it. Use the about attribute (e.g., <body about="http://example.com/recipe">). Everything that is nested inside of the HTML element with the about attribute is the description of the identified thing, unless a new subject of description is introduced via a new about attribute.
  7. Use the typeof attribute to express what is the thing that you are describing (e.g., <body about="http://example.com/recipe" typeof="dv:Recipe">). Pick a suitable class from the RDF vocabularies you have chosen to use and define the thing you describe as an instance of this class. Note that every time the typeof attribute is used the subject of description changes.
  8. Use the property, rel and rev attributes to name the properties of the thing you are describing (e.g., <h1 property="name">).
  9. Assing values to the properties of the described thing using either the textual content of the annotated HTML element or an attribute such as content, href, resource or src (e.g., <h1 property="name">RDFa in action</h1> or <span property="v:author" rel="dcterms:creator" resource="http://keg.vse.cz/resource/person/jindrich-mynarz">Jind??ich Mynarz</span>).
  10. If you have assigned the textual content of an HTML element as a value of an attribute of the thing described you can annotate it. To define the language of the text, use either xml:lang (in XHTML) or lang (in HTML5) attributes (e.g., <h1 property="name" lang="en">RDFa in action</h1>). If you want to set the datatype of the value, use the datatype attribute (e.g., <span content="2011-07-03" datatype="xsd:date">July 3, 2011</span>)
  11. Check you RDFa-annotated document using validators and examine the data using RDFa distillers to see if you have got it right.
  12. Publish the annotated HTML documents on the Web. Ping the RDFa consumers such as search engines so that they know about your RDFa-annotated web pages.

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