Obsolete - please see ShEx Primer

Shape Expressions examples

In the following examples we omit prefix declarations assuming that we are employing the namespaces defined in prefix.cc

Standard examples

The following examples work in all the implementations.

Issues/Users Example

In this example we define the shapes of Issues and Users as:

<IssueShape> {                            # A Issue shape
    :state ( :unassigned :assigned ),     #   has a state with 2 possible values
    :reportedBy @<UserShape>,             #   is reported by a user
    :reportedOn xsd:date,                 #   is reported on a date
    ( :reproducedBy @<UserShape>          #   can optionally have 2 properties
    , :reproducedOn xsd:date              #     reproducedBy/On
    )?,
    :related @<IssueShape>*               #   is related to several other issues
}

<UserShape> {                             # A user shape can have either
    ( foaf:name xsd:string                #  name or
    | foaf:givenName xsd:string+ ,        #  several given names and
      foaf:familyName xsd:string          #   family name
    ), 
    foaf:mbox shex:IRI ?                  # mbox Optional, any IRI
}

Try it with RDFShape

Try it with Eric's fancy demo

Example with conjunction

A concept that has a rdfs:label and a rdfs:comment and any other triples.

<concept> { rdfs:label . 
          , rdfs:comment .
          , . . *             # this declaration could be omitted if we employ open semantics
          }

Try it

Example with disjunction

A concept that has either rdfs:label or skos:prefLabel and any other triple

<concept> { ( rdfs:label . 
            | rdfs:comment .
            ),
            . . *    # this line could be omitted if we use open semantics
          }

Try it

Example with xsd:string

A concept that has rdfs:label and a value of type xsd:string

<concept { rdfs:label xsd:string }

Try it

Example with some specific values

A concept that has a label with the values "cat" or "dog"

<concept> { rdfs:label ("car" "dog") }

Try it

Example with lists

A concept that has as values a list of integers

:a {
  :p @<listOfInt>
}

<listOfInt> {
   rdf:first xsd:integer 
 , ( rdf:rest (rdf:nil) | rdf:rest @<listOfInt>)
}

Try It

Open/Closed semantics of shapes

Example of a single arc

A concept that has only rdfs:label and does not have any other property.

<concept> { rdfs:label . }

It validates an object with that single property. Try it

But using the closed semantics it does not validate an object with more than that property.

Try it

The shape can be opened using . . *

<concept> { rdfs:label . , 
            . . *
          }

Try it

Proposed Extensions examples

The following examples only work in some implementations

Example with language tags

A concept that has rdfs:label an English or an Spanish literal

<concept> { rdfs:label ( @en @es ) }

Try it

Regular expressions

A concept that has a label that contains the string "papapa"

<concept> { rdfs:label ( /pa{3}/ )

Try it