LinkEDTF

Extended Date-Time Format (EDTF) Linked Data generator. EDTF is a data representation standard proposed by the Library of Congress for representing non-conventional dates and times, such as missing digits, seasons, decades, intervals, approximation, and uncertainty.

This implementation allows you to generate a semantic representation of those temporal indicators: you can serve these alongside your Linked Dataset without having to materialize endless RDF descriptions of all possible time indicators.

Features

• A Python programming library. (WIP)
• A Linked Data server. (coming soon...)
• Inherits EDTF compliance from saw-leipzig/python-edtf¹.
• Represents data according to the PeriodO specification.

Usage

>>> from linkedtf import LEDTF
# Initialize with a prefix of choice
>>> le = LEDTF('http://example.com/edtf/')
# Create an RDF resource from the plain string value
>>> s = le.uri('1987/2001')
>>> s
rdflib.term.URIRef('http://example.com/edtf/1987%2F2001')
# Get its description in RDF statements
>>> g = le.description(s)
>>> ttl = g.serialize(format="ttl")
>>> ttl
<http://example.com/edtf/1987%2F2001> a <http://www.w3.org/2006/time#DateTimeDescription> .
# ... etc

Limitations

• EDTF seems to lack support for calendars other than the Gregorian one.
• Won't do: SPARQL query engine for EDTF data generated on-the-fly; would be nice to have, but some queries may never terminate.
• TODO?: Support representation schemes other than PeriodO/OWL-Time (e.g. CIDOC-CRM?).

Rights

LGPLv3

Footnotes

1. Fork of ixc/python-edtf with support for recent versions of the EDTF specification. ↩