SuRF is a Python library for working with RDF data in an Object-Oriented manner. In SuRF, RDF nodes (subjects and objects) are represented as Python objects and RDF edges (predicates) as their attributes. SuRF is an Object RDF Mapper (ORM), similar in concept to Object Relational Mappers like SQLAlchemy.

Install

Install SuRF:

$ # with easy_install ... 
$ easy_install -U surf

$ # or with pip ... 
$ pip install --upgrade surf

You'll need one of the following plugins (also installable by easy_install):

• surf.sparql_protocol, for stores with a SPARQL Protocol endpoint (e.g. Virtuoso)
• surf.allegro_franz, for the AllegroGraph RDFStore
• surf.sesame2, for stores with a Sesame2 HTTP API
• surf.rdflib, for the experimental store implementation of rdflib (via rdfextras)

Example

The example below shows how to query a resource using the rdflib in-memory backend:

>>> from surf import *
>>> store = Store(reader='rdflib',
...               writer='rdflib',
...               rdflib_store='IOMemory')
>>> session = Session(store)
>>> store.load_triples(source='http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/card.rdf')
True
>>> Person = session.get_class(ns.FOAF.Person)
>>> all_persons = Person.all()
>>> for person in all_persons:
...     print person.foaf_name.first
...
Timothy Berners-Lee

Documentation

You can read the documentation online at http://packages.python.org/SuRF/

To build the documentation yourself, install sphinx and run the build step::

    $ pip install sphinx
    $ python setup.py build_sphinx

Unit tests

Run unit tests from the source directory:

    $ python setup.py test

Test plugins from their respective source directory, e.g.:

    $ cd plugins/surf.sparql_protocol/
    $ python setup.py test