Turtle (syntax)

<h2 id="history">History</h2>
<p>Turtle was defined by Dave Beckett as a subset of <a href="/facts/Tim_Berners-Lee/JRv21mt9">Tim Berners-Lee</a> and <a href="/facts/Dan_Connolly_(computer_scientist)/kMtjty64">Dan Connolly</a>'s <a href="/facts/Notation3/1Lw1bfQc">Notation3</a> (N3) language, and a superset of the minimal <a href="/facts/N-Triples/qcHFwQB6">N-Triples</a> format. Unlike full N3, which has an expressive power that goes much beyond RDF, Turtle can only serialize valid RDF graphs. Turtle is an alternative to <a href="/facts/RDF%2fXML/vsRwLAVS">RDF/XML</a>, the original syntax and standard for writing RDF. As opposed to RDF/XML, Turtle does not rely on <a href="/facts/XML/clNgUfWk">XML</a> and is generally recognized as being more readable and easier to edit manually than its XML counterpart.
</p><p><a href="/facts/SPARQL/XPP7pFDJ">SPARQL</a>, the query language for RDF, uses a syntax similar to Turtle for expressing query patterns.
</p><p>In 2011, a working group of the <a href="/facts/World_Wide_Web_Consortium/lGWmhF6M">World Wide Web Consortium</a> (W3C) started working on an updated version of RDF, with the intention of publishing it along with a standardised version of Turtle. This Turtle specification was published as a W3C Recommendation on 25 February 2014.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:1" href="#fn:1"><sup>1</sup></a>
</p><p>A significant proportion of RDF toolkits include Turtle parsing and serializing capability. Some examples of such toolkits are <a href="/facts/Redland_RDF_Application_Framework/Xf6IJo8X">Redland</a>, <a href="/facts/RDF4J/AVFrpG23">RDF4J</a>, <a href="/facts/Jena_(framework)/n5W0jCIt">Jena</a>, Python's <a href="/facts/RDFLib/lrqPdzK2">RDFLib</a> and JavaScript's N3.js.
</p>
<h2 id="example">Example</h2>
<p>The following example defines 3 prefixes ("rdf", "dc", and "ex"), and uses them in expressing a statement about the editorship of the RDF/XML document:
</p>
@prefix rdf: <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#> .
@prefix dc: <http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/> .
@prefix ex: <http://example.org/stuff/1.0/> .

<http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-syntax-grammar>
  dc:title "RDF/XML Syntax Specification (Revised)" ;
  ex:editor [
    ex:fullname "Dave Beckett";
    ex:homePage <http://purl.org/net/dajobe/>
  ] .

<p>(Turtle examples are also valid <a href="/facts/Notation3/1Lw1bfQc">Notation3</a>).
</p><p>The example encodes an RDF graph made of four triples, which express these facts:
</p>
<ul><li>The W3C technical report on RDF syntax and grammar has the title <i>RDF/XML Syntax Specification (Revised)</i>.</li>
<li>That report's editor is a certain individual, who in turn
<ul><li>Has full name <i>Dave Beckett</i>.</li>
<li>Has a home page at a certain place.</li></ul></li></ul>
<p>Here are the triples made explicit in <a href="/facts/N-Triples/qcHFwQB6">N-Triples</a> notation:
</p>
<http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-syntax-grammar> <http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/title> "RDF/XML Syntax Specification (Revised)" .
<http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-syntax-grammar> <http://example.org/stuff/1.0/editor> _:bnode .
_:bnode <http://example.org/stuff/1.0/fullname> "Dave Beckett" .
_:bnode <http://example.org/stuff/1.0/homePage> <http://purl.org/net/dajobe/> .

<p>The <a href="/facts/MIME_type/A31N5Fwj">MIME type</a> of Turtle is text/turtle. The character encoding of Turtle content is always <a href="/facts/UTF-8/xlaVHSyf">UTF-8</a>.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:2" href="#fn:2"><sup>2</sup></a>
</p>
<h2 id="named-graphs">Named graphs</h2>
<p><a href="/facts/TriG_(syntax)/95mstdh1">TriG</a> RDF syntax extends Turtle with support for <a href="/facts/Named_graph/2t3FKL3c">named graphs</a>.
</p>
<h2 id="see-also">See also</h2>
<ul><li><a href="/facts/N-Triples/qcHFwQB6">N-Triples</a></li>
<li><a href="/facts/Notation3/1Lw1bfQc">Notation3 (N3)</a></li>
<li><a href="/facts/LV2/607lJFAm">LV2</a></li></ul>

<h2 id="external-links">External links</h2>
<ul><li><a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/turtle/">Turtle Specification</a></li>
<li><a href="https://docs.enola.dev/concepts/turtle/">Turtle TL;DR Cheatsheet on Enola.dev</a></li></ul>

<h2 id="references">References</h2>

<ol>
<li id="fn:1"><p>"RDF 1.1 Turtle - Terse RDF Triple LanguageTurtle". World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). 25 February 2014. Retrieved 16 December 2015. <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/turtle/" target="_blank">http://www.w3.org/TR/turtle/</a> <a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li>
<li id="fn:2"><p>"MIME Media Types: text/turtle". Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). 28 March 2011. Retrieved 27 November 2011. <a href="https://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/text/turtle" target="_blank">https://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/text/turtle</a> <a href="#fnref:2" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li>
</ol>

Turtle (syntax) open-in-new

Turtle (syntax)