ARQ - Application API

The application API is in the package org.apache.jena.query.

Other packages contain various parts of the system (execution engine, parsers, testing etc). Most applications will only need to use the main package. Only applications wishing to programmatically build queries or modify the behaviour of the query engine need to use the others packages directly.

Key Classes

The package org.apache.jena.query is the main application package.

  • Query - a class that represents the application query. It is a container for all the details of the query. Objects of class Query are normally created by calling one of the methods of QueryFactory methods which provide access to the various parsers.
  • QueryExecution - represents one execution of a query.
  • QueryExecutionFactory - a place to get QueryExecution instances.
  • DatasetFactory - a place to make datasets.
  • For SELECT queries:
    • QuerySolution - A single solution to the query.
    • ResultSet - All the QuerySolutions. An iterator.
    • ResultSetFormatter - turn a ResultSet into various forms; into json, text, or as plain XML.

SELECT queries

The basic steps in making a SELECT query are outlined in the example below. A query is created from a string using the QueryFactory. The query and model or RDF dataset to be queried are then passed to QueryExecutionFactory to produce an instance of a query execution. QueryExecution objects are java.lang.AutoCloseable and can be used in try-resource. Result are handled in a loop and finally the query execution is closed.

  import org.apache.jena.query.* ;
  Model model = ... ;
  String queryString = " .... " ;
  Query query = QueryFactory.create(queryString) ;
  try (QueryExecution qexec = QueryExecutionFactory.create(query, model)) {
    ResultSet results = qexec.execSelect() ;
    for ( ; results.hasNext() ; )
    {
      QuerySolution soln = results.nextSolution() ;
      RDFNode x = soln.get("varName") ;       // Get a result variable by name.
      Resource r = soln.getResource("VarR") ; // Get a result variable - must be a resource
      Literal l = soln.getLiteral("VarL") ;   // Get a result variable - must be a literal
    }
  }

It is important to cleanly close the query execution when finished. System resources connected to persistent storage may need to be released.

A ResultSet supports the Java iterator interface so the following is also a way to process the results if preferred:

    Iterator<QuerySolution> results = qexec.execSelect() ;
    for ( ; results.hasNext() ; )
    {
        QuerySolution soln = results.next() ;
    . . .
    }

The step of creating a query and then a query execution can be reduced to one step in some common cases:

  import org.apache.jena.query.* ;
  Model model = ... ;
  String queryString = " .... " ;
  try (QueryExecution qexec = QueryExecutionFactory.create(queryString, model)) {
    ResultSet results = qexec.execSelect() ;
    . . .
  }

Passing a result set out of the processing loop.

A ResultSet is an iterator and can be traversed only once. What is more, much of query execution and result set processing is handled internally in a streaming fashion. The ResultSet returned by execSelect is not valid after the QueryExecution is closed, whether explicitly or by try-resources as the QueryExecution implements AutoCloseable.

A result set may be materialized - this is then usable outside

  try (QueryExecution qexec = QueryExecutionFactory.create(queryString, model)) {
      ResultSet results = qexec.execSelect() ;
      results = ResultSetFactory.copyResults(results) ;
      return results ;    // Passes the result set out of the try-resources
  }

The result set from ResultSetFactory.copyResults is a ResultSetRewindable which has a reset() operation that positions the iterator at the start of the result again.

This can also be used when the results are going to be used in a loop that modifies the data. It is not possible to update the model or dataset while looping over the results of a SELECT query.

The models returned by execConstruct and execDescribe are valid after the QueryExecution is closed.

Example: formatting a result set

Instead of a loop to deal with each row in the result set, the application can call an operation of the ResultSetFormatter. This is what the command line applications do.

Example: processing results to produce a simple text presentation:

    ResultSetFormatter fmt = new ResultSetFormatter(results, query) ;
    fmt.printAll(System.out) ;

or simply:

 ResultSetFormatter.out(System.out, results, query) ;

Example: Processing results

The results are objects from the Jena RDF API and API calls, which do not modify the model, can be mixed with query results processing:

  for ( ; results.hasNext() ; )
  {
      // Access variables: soln.get("x") ;
      RDFNode n = soln.get("x") ; // "x" is a variable in the query
      // If you need to test the thing returned
      if ( n.isLiteral() )
          ((Literal)n).getLexicalForm() ;
      if ( n.isResource() )
      {
         Resource r = (Resource)n ;
          if ( ! r.isAnon() )
          {
            ... r.getURI() ...
          }
      }
  }

Updates to the model must be carried out after the query execution has finished. Typically, this involves collecting results of interest in a local datastructure and looping over that structure after the query execution has finished and been closed.

CONSTRUCT Queries

CONSTRUCT queries return a single RDF graph. As usual, the query execution should be closed after use.

Query query = QueryFactory.create(queryString) ;
QueryExecution qexec = QueryExecutionFactory.create(query, model) ;
Model resultModel = qexec.execConstruct() ;
qexec.close() ;

DESCRIBE Queries

DESCRIBE queries return a single RDF graph.  Different handlers for the DESCRIBE operation can be loaded by added by the application.

Query query = QueryFactory.create(queryString) ;
QueryExecution qexec = QueryExecutionFactory.create(query, model) ;
Model resultModel = qexec.execDescribe() ;
qexec.close() ;

ASK Queries

The operation Query.execAsk() returns a boolean value indicating whether the query pattern matched the graph or dataset or not.

Query query = QueryFactory.create(queryString) ;
QueryExecution qexec = QueryExecutionFactory.create(query, model) ;
boolean result = qexec.execAsk() ;
qexec.close() ;

Formatting XML results

The ResultSetFormatter class has methods to write out the SPARQL Query Results XML Format. See ResultSetFormatter.outputAsXML method.

Datasets

The examples above are all queries on a single model.  A SPARQL query is made on a dataset, which is a default graph and zero or more named graphs. Datasets can be constructed using the DatasetFactory:

String dftGraphURI = "file:default-graph.ttl" ;
List namedGraphURIs = new ArrayList() ;
namedGraphURIs.add("file:named-1.ttl") ;
namedGraphURIs.add("file:named-2.ttl") ;

Query query = QueryFactory.create(queryString) ;

Dataset dataset = DatasetFactory.create(dftGraphURI, namedGraphURIs) ;
try(QueryExecution qExec = QueryExecutionFactory.create(query, dataset)) {
    ...
}

Already existing models can also be used:

Dataset dataset = DatasetFactory.create() ;
dataset.setDefaultModel(model) ;
dataset.addNamedModel("http://example/named-1", modelX) ;
dataset.addNamedModel("http://example/named-2", modelY) ;
 try(QueryExecution qExec = QueryExecutionFactory.create(query, dataset)) {
    ...
}

ARQ documentation index