RDFa

One of the mainstream annotation formats to add structured data to the web site markup is RDFa (the other formats are HTML5 Microdata and JSON-LD, along with the older but limited microformats). RDFa (RDF in attributes) makes it possible to write RDF triples in the (X)HTML markup, XML, or SVG as attribute values. The full RDFa syntax (RDFa Core) provides basic and advanced features for experts to express complex structured data in the markup, such as human relationships, places, and events. Those who want to express fairly simple structured data in their web documents can use the less expressive RDFa Lite, a minimal subset of RDFa that is easier to learn and suitable for most general scenarios. RDFa Lite supports the following attributes: vocab, typeof, property, resource, and prefix. In host languages that authorize the use of the href and src attributes, they are supported by RDFa Lite too.
A bunch of numbers has a different meaning in a math lesson than in the telephone book, while a word often has a different meaning in a poem than in real life. The meaning of words depends on the context, so in order to make computers understand the field or area (knowledge domain), we have to identify the machine-readable vocabulary that defines the terminology of the domain. In RDFa, the vocabulary can be identified by the vocab attribute, the type of the entity to describe is annotated by the typeof attribute, and the properties with the property attribute (see Listing 1).

Listing 1. Basic Machine-Readable Annotation of a Person in RDFa


<p vocab="http://schema.org/" typeof="Person">
  My name is <span property="name">Leslie Sikos</span> and you can find out more about me by visiting <a property="url" href="http://www.lesliesikos.com">my web site</a>.

Once the preceding code is published and indexed, search engines will find the “web site of Leslie Sikos” more efficiently. To uniquely identify this entity on the Web, the resource attribute is used (see Listing 2). The resource attribute is one of the options to set the object of statements, which is particularly useful when referring to resources that are not navigable links, such as the ISBN number of a book.

Listing 2. A Unique Identifier of the Entity in RDFa


<p vocab="http://schema.org/" typeof="Person" resource="#sikos">
  My name is <span property="name">Leslie Sikos</span> and you can find out more about me by visiting <a property="url" href="http://www.lesliesikos.com">my web site</a>.

The vocabulary declaration makes it possible to omit the full URI from each property (name refers to http://schema.org/name, url abbreviates http://schema.org/url). However, if you add RDFa annotation for more than one real-world object or person, you can declare the namespace of the vocabulary on the html element of your (X)HTML document (e.g., <html xmlns:foaf="http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/" …>) and associate it with a prefix that can be reused throughout the document. Every time you use a term from the vocabulary declared on the top of your document, you add the prefix followed by a colon, such as foaf:name, schema:url, etc. Using prefixes is not only handy but sometimes the only way to annotate your markup. For example, if you need terms from more than one vocabulary, additional vocabularies can be specified by the prefix attribute (see Listing 3). You can refer to any term from your most frequently used vocabulary (defined in the vocab attribute value) without the prefix, and terms from your second vocabulary with the prefix you define as the attribute value of the prefix attribute, or define them on the html element with the xmlns attribute followed by the prefix name and the namespace URI.

Listing 3. Using the Term “Textbook” from the FaBiO Ontology


<p vocab="http://schema.org/" typeof="Person" prefix="fabio: http://purl.org/spar/fabio/" 
 resource="#sikos">
  My name is <span property="name">Leslie Sikos</span> and you can find out more about me by visiting <a property="url" href="http://www.lesliesikos.com">my web site</a>. I am the author of <a property="fabio:Textbook" href="http://lesliesikos.com/mastering-structured-data-on-the-semantic-web/">Mastering Structured Data on the Semantic Web</a>.

To make search engines “understand” that the provided link refers to a textbook of Leslie Sikos, we used the machine-readable definition of “textbook” from the FaBiO ontology. If you need more than one additional vocabulary for your RDFa annotations, you can add them to the attribute value of the prefix attribute as a space-separated list.
The most frequently used vocabulary namespaces are predefined in RDFa parsers, so you can omit them in your markup and still be able to use their terms in RDFa annotations (see Table 1).

**Table 1.** Widely Used Vocabulary Prefixes Predefined in RDFa.
Prefix	URI	Vocabulary
`cc`	http://creativecommons.org/ns#	Creative Commons Rights Expression Language
`ctag`	http://commontag.org/ns#	Common Tag
`dcterms`	http://purl.org/dc/terms/	Dublin Core Metadata Terms
`dc`	http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/	Dublin Core Metadata Element Set, Version 1.1
`foaf`	http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/	Friend of a Friend (FOAF)
`gr`	http://purl.org/goodrelations/v1#	GoodRelations
`ical`	http://www.w3.org/2002/12/cal/icaltzd#	iCalendar terms in RDF
`og`	http://ogp.me/ns#	Facebook OpenGraph
`rev`	http://purl.org/stuff/rev#	RDF Review
`sioc`	http://rdfs.org/sioc/ns#	SIOC Core
`v`	http://rdf.data-vocabulary.org/#	Google Rich Snippets
`vcard`	http://www.w3.org/2006/vcard/ns#	vCard in RDF
`schema`	http://schema.org/	schema.org

More sophisticated annotations require additional attributes that are supported by RDFa Core only. Beyond the RDFa Lite attributes, RDFa Core supports the about, content, datatype, inlist, rel, and rev attributes.
The current subject is the web address of the document or a value set by the host language, such as the base element in (X)HTML. As a result, any metadata written in a document will concern the document itself by default. The about attribute can be used to change the current subject and state what the data is about, making the properties inside the document body become part of a new object rather than referring to the entire document (as they do in the head of the document).
If some displayed text is different from the represented value, a more precise value can be added using the content attribute, which is a character data (CDATA) string to supply machine-readable content for a literal. A value can also optionally be typed using the datatype attribute (see Listing 4). Declaring the type ensures that machines can interpret strings, dates, numbers, etc., rather than considering them as a character sequence.

Listing 4. Using the content and datatype Attributes


<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" prefix="xsd: http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema# dc: http://purl.org/dc/terms/">
  <head>
    <title>Leslie’s Blog</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <h1 property="dc:title">Leslie’s Blog</h1>
    <p>
       Last modified: <span property="dc:modified"
       content="2015-05-25T10:54:00-09:30"
       datatype="xsd:dateTime">25 May 2015</span>.
    </p>
  </body>
</html>

In RDFa, the relationship between two resources (predicates) can be expressed using the rel attribute (see Listing 5).

Listing 5. Describing the Relationship Between Two Resources in RDFa


This document is licensed under the 
<a prefix="cc: http://creativecommons.org/ns#" rel="cc:license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/">Creative Commons By-NC-ND License</a>.

When a predicate is expressed using rel, the href or src attribute is used on the element of the RDFa statement, to identify the object (see Listing 6).

Listing 6. Using href to Identify the Object


<link about="mailto:leslie@example.com" rel="foaf:knows" href="mailto:christina@example.com">

Reverse relationships between two resources (predicates) can be expressed with the rev attribute. The rel and rev attributes can be used on any element individually or together. Combining rel and rev is particularly useful when there are two different relationships to express, such as when a photo is taken by the person it depicts (see Listing 7).

Listing 7. Combining the rel and rev Attributes


<img about="http://www.example.com" src="koalahug.jpg" rev="dc:creator" rel="foaf:img" />

If a triple predicate is annotated using rel or rev only, but no href, src, or resource is defined on the same element, the represented triple will be incomplete.

The inlist attribute indicates that the object generated on the element is part of a list sharing the same predicate and subject (see Listing 8). Only the presence of the inlist attribute is relevant; its attribute value is always ignored.

Listing 8. Using the inlist Attribute


<p prefix="bibo: http://purl.org/ontology/bibo/ dc: http://purl.org/dc/terms/" typeof="bibo:Website">
  The web site <span property="dc:title">Andrew Peno Graphic and Fine Artist</span> by <a inlist="" property="dc:creator" href="http://www.andrewpeno.com">Andrew Peno</a> and <a inlist="" property="dc:creator" href="http://www.lesliesikos.com">Leslie Sikos</a>. 
</p>

RDFa DOM API

The RDFa DOM API provides programmatic access to structured data expressed in RDFa on a web page.

You can read more about RDFa in the book Mastering Structured Data on the Semantic Web.