3. Basic Concepts §
This section is non-normative.
JSON [RFC7159] is a lightweight, language-independent data interchange format.
It is easy to parse and easy to generate. However, it is difficult to integrate JSON
from different sources as the data may contain keys that conflict with other
data sources. Furthermore, JSON has no
built-in support for hyperlinks, which are a fundamental building block on
the Web. Let's start by looking at an example that we will be using for the
rest of this section:
Example 2: Sample JSON document
{
"name": "Manu Sporny",
"homepage": "http://manu.sporny.org/",
"image": "http://manu.sporny.org/images/manu.png"
}It's obvious to humans that the data is about a person whose
name is "Manu Sporny"
and that the homepage property contains the URL of that person's homepage.
A machine doesn't have such an intuitive understanding and sometimes,
even for humans, it is difficult to resolve ambiguities in such representations. This problem
can be solved by using unambiguous identifiers to denote the different concepts instead of
tokens such as "name", "homepage", etc.
Linked Data, and the Web in general, uses IRIs
(Internationalized Resource Identifiers as described in [RFC3987]) for unambiguous
identification. The idea is to use IRIs
to assign unambiguous identifiers to data that may be of use to other developers.
It is useful for terms,
like name and homepage, to expand to IRIs
so that developers don't accidentally step on each other's terms. Furthermore, developers and
machines are able to use this IRI (by using a web browser, for instance) to go to
the term and get a definition of what the term means. This process is known as IRI
dereferencing.
Leveraging the popular schema.org vocabulary,
the example above could be unambiguously expressed as follows:
Example 3: Sample JSON-LD document using full IRIs instead of terms
{
"http://schema.org/name": "Manu Sporny",
"http://schema.org/url": { "@id": "http://manu.sporny.org/" },
"http://schema.org/image": { "@id": "http://manu.sporny.org/images/manu.png" }
}In the example above, every property is unambiguously identified by an IRI and all values
representing IRIs are explicitly marked as such by the
@id keyword. While this is a valid JSON-LD
document that is very specific about its data, the document is also overly verbose and difficult
to work with for human developers. To address this issue, JSON-LD introduces the notion
of a context as described in the next section.
3.1 The Context §
This section is non-normative.
When two people communicate with one another, the conversation takes
place in a shared environment, typically called
"the context of the conversation". This shared context allows the
individuals to use shortcut terms, like the first name of a mutual friend,
to communicate more quickly but without losing accuracy. A context in
JSON-LD works in the same way. It allows two applications to use shortcut
terms to communicate with one another more efficiently, but without
losing accuracy.
Simply speaking, a context is used to map terms to
IRIs. Terms are case sensitive
and any valid string that is not a reserved JSON-LD keyword
can be used as a term.
For the sample document in the previous section, a context would
look something like this:
Example 4: Context for the sample document in the previous section
{
"@context": {
"name": "http://schema.org/name",
"image": {
"@id": "http://schema.org/image",
"@type": "@id"
},
"homepage": {
"@id": "http://schema.org/url",
"@type": "@id"
}
}
}As the context above shows, the value of a term definition can
either be a simple string, mapping the term to an IRI,
or a JSON object.
When a JSON object is associated with a term, it is called
an expanded term definition. The example above specifies that
the values of image and homepage, if they are
strings, are to be interpreted as
IRIs. Expanded term definitions
also allow terms to be used for index maps
and to specify whether array values are to be
interpreted as sets or lists.
Expanded term definitions may
be defined using absolute or
compact IRIs as keys, which is
mainly used to associate type or language information with an
absolute or compact IRI.
Contexts can either be directly embedded
into the document or be referenced. Assuming the context document in the previous
example can be retrieved at https://json-ld.org/contexts/person.jsonld,
it can be referenced by adding a single line and allows a JSON-LD document to
be expressed much more concisely as shown in the example below:
Example 5: Referencing a JSON-LD context
{
"@context": "https://json-ld.org/contexts/person.jsonld",
"name": "Manu Sporny",
"homepage": "http://manu.sporny.org/",
"image": "http://manu.sporny.org/images/manu.png"
}The referenced context not only specifies how the terms map to
IRIs in the Schema.org vocabulary but also
specifies that string values associated with
the homepage and image property
can be interpreted as an IRI ("@type": "@id",
see section 3.2 IRIs for more details). This information allows developers
to re-use each other's data without having to agree to how their data will interoperate
on a site-by-site basis. External JSON-LD context documents may contain extra
information located outside of the @context key, such as
documentation about the terms declared in the
document. Information contained outside of the @context value
is ignored when the document is used as an external JSON-LD context document.
JSON documents can be interpreted as JSON-LD without having to be modified by
referencing a context via an HTTP Link Header
as described in section 4.9 Interpreting JSON as JSON-LD. It is also
possible to apply a custom context using the JSON-LD 1.1 API [JSON-LD11CG-API].
In JSON-LD documents,
contexts may also be specified inline.
This has the advantage that documents can be processed even in the
absence of a connection to the Web. Ultimately, this is a modeling decision
and different use cases may require different handling.
Example 6: In-line context definition
{
"@context": {
"name": "http://schema.org/name",
"image": {
"@id": "http://schema.org/image",
"@type": "@id"
},
"homepage": {
"@id": "http://schema.org/url",
"@type": "@id"
}
},
"name": "Manu Sporny",
"homepage": "http://manu.sporny.org/",
"image": "http://manu.sporny.org/images/manu.png"
}This section only covers the most basic features of the JSON-LD
Context. More advanced features related to the JSON-LD Context are covered
in section section 4. Advanced Concepts.
3.2 IRIs §
This section is non-normative.
IRIs (Internationalized Resource Identifiers
[RFC3987]) are fundamental to Linked Data as that is how most
nodes and properties
are identified. In JSON-LD, IRIs may be represented as an
absolute IRI or a relative IRI. An
absolute IRI is defined in [RFC3987] as containing a
scheme along with path and optional query and
fragment segments. A relative IRI is an IRI
that is relative to some other absolute IRI.
In JSON-LD, with exceptions are as described below, all relative IRIs
are resolved relative to the base IRI.
A string is interpreted as an IRI when it is the
value of an @id member:
Example 7: Values of @id are interpreted as IRI
{
"homepage": { "@id": "http://example.com/" }
}Values that are interpreted as IRIs, can also be
expressed as relative IRIs. For example,
assuming that the following document is located at
http://example.com/about/, the relative IRI
../ would expand to http://example.com/ (for more
information on where relative IRIs can be
used, please refer to section 6. JSON-LD Grammar).
Example 8: IRIs can be relative
{
"homepage": { "@id": "../" }
}Absolute IRIs can be expressed directly
in the key position like so:
Example 9: IRI as a key
{
"http://schema.org/name": "Manu Sporny"
}In the example above, the key http://schema.org/name
is interpreted as an absolute IRI.
Term-to-IRI expansion occurs if the key matches a term defined
within the active context:
Example 10: Term expansion from context definition
{
"@context": {
"name": "http://schema.org/name"
},
"name": "Manu Sporny",
"status": "trollin'"
}JSON keys that do not expand to an IRI, such as status
in the example above, are not Linked Data and thus ignored when processed.
If type coercion rules are specified in the @context for
a particular term or property IRI, an IRI is generated:
Example 11: Type coercion
{
"@context": {
"homepage": {
"@id": "http://schema.org/url",
"@type": "@id"
}
},
"homepage": "http://manu.sporny.org/"
}In the example above, since the value http://manu.sporny.org/
is expressed as a JSON string, the type coercion
rules will transform the value into an IRI when processing the data.
See section 4.6 Type Coercion for more
details about this feature.
In summary, IRIs can be expressed in a variety of
different ways in JSON-LD:
- JSON object keys that have a term mapping in
the active context expand to an IRI
(only applies outside of the context definition).
- An IRI is generated for the string value specified using
@id or @type.
- An IRI is generated for the string value of any key for which there
are coercion rules that contain an
@type key that is
set to a value of @id or @vocab.
This section only covers the most basic features associated with IRIs
in JSON-LD. More advanced features related to IRIs are covered in
section 4. Advanced Concepts.
4. Advanced Concepts §
JSON-LD has a number of features that provide functionality above and beyond
the core functionality described above. The following section describes this
advanced functionality in more detail.
4.4 Compact IRIs §
This section is non-normative.
A compact IRI is a way of expressing an IRI
using a prefix and suffix separated by a colon (:).
The prefix is a term taken from the
active context and is a short string identifying a
particular IRI in a JSON-LD document. For example, the
prefix foaf may be used as a short hand for the
Friend-of-a-Friend vocabulary, which is identified using the IRI
http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/. A developer may append
any of the FOAF vocabulary terms to the end of the prefix to specify a short-hand
version of the absolute IRI for the vocabulary term. For example,
foaf:name would be expanded to the IRI
http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/name.
Example 23: Prefix expansion
{
"@context": {
"foaf": "http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/"
},
"@type": "foaf:Person",
"foaf:name": "Dave Longley"
}In the example above, foaf:name expands to the IRI
http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/name and foaf:Person expands
to http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/Person.
Prefixes are expanded when the form of the value
is a compact IRI represented as a prefix:suffix
combination, the prefix matches a term defined within the
active context, and the suffix does not begin with two
slashes (//). The compact IRI is expanded by
concatenating the IRI mapped to the prefix to the (possibly empty)
suffix. If the prefix is not defined in the active context,
or the suffix begins with two slashes (such as in http://example.com),
the value is interpreted as absolute IRI instead. If the prefix is an
underscore (_), the value is interpreted as blank node identifier
instead.
It's also possible to use compact IRIs within the context as shown in the
following example:
Example 24: Using vocabularies
{
"@context": {
"@version": 1.1,
"xsd": "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#",
"foaf": "http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/",
"foaf:homepage": { "@type": "@id" },
"picture": { "@id": "foaf:depiction", "@type": "@id" }
},
"@id": "http://me.markus-lanthaler.com/",
"@type": "foaf:Person",
"foaf:name": "Markus Lanthaler",
"foaf:homepage": "http://www.markus-lanthaler.com/",
"picture": "http://twitter.com/account/profile_image/markuslanthaler"
}In JSON-LD 1.0, terms may be chosen as compact IRI prefixes when
compacting only if a simple term definition is used where the value ends with a
URI gen-delim character (e.g, /,
# and others, see [RFC3986]).
The previous specification allows any term to be chosen as
a compact IRI prefix, which led to a poor experience.
In JSON-LD 1.1, terms may be chosen as compact IRI prefixes
when compacting only if
a simple term definition is used where the value ends with a URI gen-delim character,
or if their expanded term definition contains
a @prefix member with the value true.
Note
This represents a small change to the 1.0 algorithm to prevent IRIs
that are not really intended to be used as prefixes from being used for creating
compact IRIs.
When processing mode is set to json-ld-1.1, terms will be used as compact IRI prefixes
when compacting only if their expanded term definition contains
a @prefix member with the value true, or if it has a
a simple term definition where the value ends with a URI gen-delim character
(e.g, /, # and others, see [RFC3986]).
Example 25: Using explicit @prefix declaration to create compact IRIs
{
"@context": {
"compact-iris": {"@id": "http://example.com/compact-iris-", "@prefix": true},
"property": "http://example.com/property"
},
"property": {
"@id": "compact-iris:are-considered",
"property": "@prefix does not require a gen-delim"
}
}In this case, the compact-iris term would not normally be usable as a prefix, both
because it is defined with an expanded term definition, and because
it's @id does not end in a
gen-delim character. Adding
"@prefix": true allows it to be used as the prefix portion of
the compact IRI compact-iris:are-considered.
4.5 Typed Values §
This section is non-normative.
A value with an associated type, also known as a
typed value, is indicated by associating a value with
an IRI which indicates the value's type. Typed values may be
expressed in JSON-LD in three ways:
- By utilizing the
@type keyword when defining
a term within an @context section.
- By utilizing a value object.
- By using a native JSON type such as number, true, or false.
The first example uses the @type keyword to associate a
type with a particular term in the @context:
Example 26: Expanded term definition with type coercion
{
"@context": {
"modified": {
"@id": "http://purl.org/dc/terms/modified",
"@type": "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime"
}
},
"@id": "http://example.com/docs/1",
"modified": "2010-05-29T14:17:39+02:00"
}The modified key's value above is automatically type coerced to a
dateTime value because of the information specified in the
@context. A JSON-LD processor will interpret the example above
as follows:
| Subject |
Property |
Value |
Value Type |
| http://example.com/docs/1 |
http://purl.org/dc/terms/modified |
2010-05-29T14:17:39+02:00 |
xsd:dateTime |
The second example uses the expanded form of setting the type information
in the body of a JSON-LD document:
Example 27: Expanded value with type
{
"@context": {
"modified": {
"@id": "http://purl.org/dc/terms/modified"
}
},
"modified": {
"@value": "2010-05-29T14:17:39+02:00",
"@type": "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime"
}
}Both examples above would generate the value
2010-05-29T14:17:39+02:00 with the type
http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime. Note that it is
also possible to use a term or a compact IRI to
express the value of a type.
A node type specifies the type of thing
that is being described, like a person, place, event, or web page. A
value type specifies the data type of a particular value, such
as an integer, a floating point number, or a date.
Example 28: Example demonstrating the context-sensitivity for @type
{
"@id": "http://example.org/posts#TripToWestVirginia",
"@type": "http://schema.org/BlogPosting",
"modified": {
"@value": "2010-05-29T14:17:39+02:00",
"@type": "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime"
}
}The first use of @type associates a node type
(http://schema.org/BlogPosting) with the node,
which is expressed using the @id keyword.
The second use of @type associates a value type
(http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime) with the
value expressed using the @value keyword. As a
general rule, when @value and @type are used in
the same JSON object, the @type
keyword is expressing a value type.
Otherwise, the @type keyword is expressing a
node type. The example above expresses the following data:
| Subject |
Property |
Value |
Value Type |
| http://example.org/posts#TripToWestVirginia |
rdf:type |
schema:BlogPosting |
- |
| http://example.org/posts#TripToWestVirginia |
dc:modified |
2010-05-29T14:17:39+02:00 |
xsd:dateTime |
4.6 Type Coercion §
This section is non-normative.
JSON-LD supports the coercion of values to particular data types.
Type coercion allows someone deploying JSON-LD to coerce the incoming or
outgoing values to the proper data type based on a mapping of data type IRIs to
terms. Using type coercion, value representation is preserved without requiring
the data type to be specified with each piece of data.
Type coercion is specified within an expanded term definition
using the @type key. The value of this key expands to an IRI.
Alternatively, the keyword @id or @vocab may be used
as value to indicate that within the body of a JSON-LD document, a string value of a
term coerced to @id or @vocab is to be interpreted as an
IRI. The difference between @id and @vocab is how values are expanded
to absolute IRIs. @vocab first tries to expand the value
by interpreting it as term. If no matching term is found in the
active context, it tries to expand it as compact IRI or absolute IRI
if there's a colon in the value; otherwise, it will expand the value using the
active context's vocabulary mapping, if present.
Values coerced to @id in contrast are expanded as
compact IRI or absolute IRI if a colon is present; otherwise, they are interpreted
as relative IRI.
Terms or compact IRIs used as the value of a
@type key may be defined within the same context. This means that one may specify a
term like xsd and then use xsd:integer within the same
context definition.
The example below demonstrates how a JSON-LD author can coerce values to
typed values and IRIs.
Example 29: Expanded term definition with types
{
"@context": {
"xsd": "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#",
"name": "http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/name",
"age": {
"@id": "http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/age",
"@type": "xsd:integer"
},
"homepage": {
"@id": "http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/homepage",
"@type": "@id"
}
},
"@id": "http://example.com/people#john",
"name": "John Smith",
"age": "41",
"homepage": [
"http://personal.example.org/",
"http://work.example.com/jsmith/"
]
}The example shown above would generate the following data.
| Subject |
Property |
Value |
Value Type |
| http://example.com/people#john |
foaf:name |
John Smith |
|
| http://example.com/people#john |
foaf:age |
41 |
xsd:integer |
| http://example.com/people#john |
foaf:homepage |
http://personal.example.org/ |
IRI |
| http://work.example.com/jsmith/ |
IRI |
Terms may also be defined using absolute IRIs
or compact IRIs. This allows coercion rules
to be applied to keys which are not represented as a simple term.
For example:
Example 30: Term definitions using compact and absolute IRIs
{
"@context": {
"foaf": "http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/",
"foaf:age": {
"@id": "http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/age",
"@type": "xsd:integer"
},
"http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/homepage": {
"@type": "@id"
}
},
"foaf:name": "John Smith",
"foaf:age": "41",
"http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/homepage": [
"http://personal.example.org/",
"http://work.example.com/jsmith/"
]
}In this case the @id definition in the term definition is optional.
If it does exist, the compact IRI or IRI representing
the term will always be expanded to IRI defined by the @id
key—regardless of whether a prefix is defined or not.
Type coercion is always performed using the unexpanded value of the key. In the
example above, that means that type coercion is done looking for foaf:age
in the active context and not for the corresponding, expanded
IRI http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/age.
Note
Keys in the context are treated as terms for the purpose of
expansion and value coercion. At times, this may result in multiple representations for the same expanded IRI.
For example, one could specify that dog and cat both expanded to http://example.com/vocab#animal.
Doing this could be useful for establishing different type coercion or language specification rules. It also allows a compact IRI (or even an
absolute IRI) to be defined as something else entirely. For example, one could specify that
the term http://example.org/zoo should expand to
http://example.org/river, but this usage is discouraged because it would lead to a
great deal of confusion among developers attempting to understand the JSON-LD document.
4.8 Advanced Context Usage §
This section is non-normative.
Section 3.1 The Context introduced the basics of what makes
JSON-LD work. This section expands on the basic principles of the
context and demonstrates how more advanced use cases can
be achieved using JSON-LD.
In general, contexts may be used at any time a
JSON object is defined.
The only time that one cannot express a context is as a direct child of another context definition.
For example, a JSON-LD document may use more than one context at different
points in a document:
Example 33: Using multiple contexts
[
{
"@context": "http://example.org/contexts/person.jsonld",
"name": "Manu Sporny",
"homepage": "http://manu.sporny.org/",
"depiction": "http://twitter.com/account/profile_image/manusporny"
},
{
"@context": "http://example.org/contexts/place.jsonld",
"name": "The Empire State Building",
"description": "The Empire State Building is a 102-story landmark in New York City.",
"geo": {
"latitude": "40.75",
"longitude": "73.98"
}
}
]Duplicate context terms are overridden using a
most-recently-defined-wins mechanism.
Example 34: Scoped contexts within node objects
{
"@context": {
"name": "http://example.com/person#name",
"details": "http://example.com/person#details"
},
"name": "Markus Lanthaler",
"details": {
"@context": {
"name": "http://example.com/organization#name"
},
"name": "Graz University of Technology"
}
}In the example above, the name term is overridden
in the more deeply nested details structure. Note that this is
rarely a good authoring practice and is typically used when working with
legacy applications that depend on a specific structure of the
JSON object. If a term is redefined within a
context, all previous rules associated with the previous definition are
removed. If a term is redefined to null,
the term is effectively removed from the list of
terms defined in the active context.
Multiple contexts may be combined using an array, which is processed
in order. The set of contexts defined within a specific JSON object are
referred to as local contexts. The
active context refers to the accumulation of
local contexts that are in scope at a
specific point within the document. Setting a local context
to null effectively resets the active context
to an empty context. The following example specifies an external context
and then layers an embedded context on top of the external context:
Example 35: Combining external and local contexts
{
"@context": [
"https://json-ld.org/contexts/person.jsonld",
{
"pic": "http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/depiction"
}
],
"name": "Manu Sporny",
"homepage": "http://manu.sporny.org/",
"pic": "http://twitter.com/account/profile_image/manusporny"
}Note
When possible, the context definition should be put
at the top of a JSON-LD document. This makes the document easier to read and
might make streaming parsers more efficient. Documents that do not have the
context at the top are still conformant JSON-LD.
Note
To avoid forward-compatibility issues, terms
starting with an @ character are to be avoided as they
might be used as keyword in future versions
of JSON-LD. Terms starting with an @ character that are not
JSON-LD 1.1 keywords are treated as any other term, i.e.,
they are ignored unless mapped to an IRI. Furthermore, the use of
empty terms ("") is not allowed as
not all programming languages are able to handle empty JSON keys.
4.9 Interpreting JSON as JSON-LD §
Ordinary JSON documents can be interpreted as JSON-LD
by providing an explicit JSON-LD context document. One way
to provide this is by using referencing a JSON-LD
context document in an HTTP Link Header.
Doing so allows JSON to be unambiguously machine-readable without requiring developers to drastically
change their documents and provides an upgrade path for existing infrastructure
without breaking existing clients that rely on the application/json
media type or a media type with a +json suffix as defined in
[RFC6839].
In order to use an external context with an ordinary JSON document,
when retrieving an ordinary JSON document via HTTP, processors MUST
retrieve any JSON-LD document referenced by a
Link Header with:
rel="http://www.w3.org/ns/json-ld#context", andtype="application/ld+json".
The referenced document MUST have a top-level JSON object.
The @context subtree within that object is added to the top-level
JSON object of the referencing document. If an array
is at the top-level of the referencing document and its items are
JSON objects, the @context
subtree is added to all array items. All extra information located outside
of the @context subtree in the referenced document MUST be
discarded. Effectively this means that the active context is
initialized with the referenced external context. A response MUST NOT
contain more than one HTTP Link Header [RFC5988] using the
http://www.w3.org/ns/json-ld#context link relation.
Other mechanisms for providing a JSON-LD Context MAY be described for other
URI schemes.
The JSON-LD 1.1 Processing Algorithms and API specification [JSON-LD11CG-API]
provides for an expandContext option for specifying
a context to use when expanding JSON documents programatically.
The following example demonstrates the use of an external context with an
ordinary JSON document over HTTP:
Example 36: Referencing a JSON-LD context from a JSON document via an HTTP Link Header
GET /ordinary-json-document.json HTTP/1.1
Host: example.com
Accept: application/ld+json,application/json,*/*;q=0.1
====================================
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json
Link: <https://json-ld.org/contexts/person.jsonld>; rel="http://www.w3.org/ns/json-ld#context"; type="application/ld+json"
{
"name": "Markus Lanthaler",
"homepage": "http://www.markus-lanthaler.com/",
"image": "http://twitter.com/account/profile_image/markuslanthaler"
}Please note that JSON-LD documents
served with the application/ld+json
media type MUST have all context information, including references to external
contexts, within the body of the document. Contexts linked via a
http://www.w3.org/ns/json-ld#context HTTP Link Header MUST be
ignored for such documents.
4.10 String Internationalization §
This section is non-normative.
At times, it is important to annotate a string
with its language. In JSON-LD this is possible in a variety of ways.
First, it is possible to define a default language for a JSON-LD document
by setting the @language key in the context:
Example 37: Setting the default language of a JSON-LD document
{
"@context": {
"@language": "ja"
},
"name": "花澄",
"occupation": "科学者"
}The example above would associate the ja language
code with the two strings 花澄 and 科学者.
Languages codes are defined in [BCP47]. The default language applies to all
string values that are not type coerced.
To clear the default language for a subtree, @language can
be set to null in a local context as follows:
Example 38: Clearing default language
{
"@context": {
"@language": "ja"
},
"name": "花澄",
"details": {
"@context": {
"@language": null
},
"occupation": "Ninja"
}
}Second, it is possible to associate a language with a specific term
using an expanded term definition:
Example 39: Expanded term definition with language
{
"@context": {
"ex": "http://example.com/vocab/",
"@language": "ja",
"name": { "@id": "ex:name", "@language": null },
"occupation": { "@id": "ex:occupation" },
"occupation_en": { "@id": "ex:occupation", "@language": "en" },
"occupation_cs": { "@id": "ex:occupation", "@language": "cs" }
},
"name": "Yagyū Muneyoshi",
"occupation": "忍者",
"occupation_en": "Ninja",
"occupation_cs": "Nindža"
}The example above would associate 忍者 with the specified default
language code ja, Ninja with the language code
en, and Nindža with the language code cs.
The value of name, Yagyū Muneyoshi wouldn't be
associated with any language code since @language was reset to
null in the expanded term definition.
Just as in the example above, systems often need to express the value of a
property in multiple languages. Typically, such systems also try to ensure that
developers have a programmatically easy way to navigate the data structures for
the language-specific data. In this case, language maps
may be utilized.
Example 40: Language map expressing a property in three languages
{
"@context": {
"occupation": { "@id": "ex:occupation", "@container": "@language" }
},
"name": "Yagyū Muneyoshi",
"occupation": {
"ja": "忍者",
"en": "Ninja",
"cs": "Nindža"
}
}The example above expresses exactly the same information as the previous
example but consolidates all values in a single property. To access the
value in a specific language in a programming language supporting dot-notation
accessors for object properties, a developer may use the
property.language pattern. For example, to access the occupation
in English, a developer would use the following code snippet:
obj.occupation.en.
Third, it is possible to override the default language by using a
value object:
Example 41: Overriding default language using an expanded value
{
"@context": {
"@language": "ja"
},
"name": "花澄",
"occupation": {
"@value": "Scientist",
"@language": "en"
}
}This makes it possible to specify a plain string by omitting the
@language tag or setting it to null when expressing
it using a value object:
Example 42: Removing language information using an expanded value
{
"@context": {
"@language": "ja"
},
"name": {
"@value": "Frank"
},
"occupation": {
"@value": "Ninja",
"@language": "en"
},
"speciality": "手裏剣"
}4.11 IRI Expansion within a Context §
This section is non-normative.
In general, normal IRI expansion rules apply
anywhere an IRI is expected (see section 3.2 IRIs). Within
a context definition, this can mean that terms defined
within the context may also be used within that context as long as
there are no circular dependencies. For example, it is common to use
the xsd namespace when defining typed values:
Example 43: IRI expansion within a context
{
"@context": {
"xsd": "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#",
"name": "http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/name",
"age": {
"@id": "http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/age",
"@type": "xsd:integer"
},
"homepage": {
"@id": "http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/homepage",
"@type": "@id"
}
}
}In this example, the xsd term is defined
and used as a prefix for the @type coercion
of the age property.
Terms may also be used when defining the IRI of another
term:
Example 44: Using a term to define the IRI of another term within a context
{
"@context": {
"foaf": "http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/",
"xsd": "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#",
"name": "foaf:name",
"age": {
"@id": "foaf:age",
"@type": "xsd:integer"
},
"homepage": {
"@id": "foaf:homepage",
"@type": "@id"
}
}
}Compact IRIs
and IRIs may be used on the left-hand side of a
term definition.
Example 45: Using a compact IRI as a term
{
"@context": {
"foaf": "http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/",
"xsd": "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#",
"name": "foaf:name",
"foaf:age": {
"@type": "xsd:integer"
},
"foaf:homepage": {
"@type": "@id"
}
}
}
In this example, the compact IRI form is used in two different
ways.
In the first approach, foaf:age declares both the
IRI for the term (using short-form) as well as the
@type associated with the term. In the second
approach, only the @type associated with the term is
specified. The full IRI for
foaf:homepage is determined by looking up the foaf
prefix in the
context.
Absolute IRIs may also be used in the key position in a context:
Example 46: Associating context definitions with absolute IRIs
{
"@context": {
"foaf": "http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/",
"xsd": "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#",
"name": "foaf:name",
"foaf:age": {
"@id": "foaf:age",
"@type": "xsd:integer"
},
"http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/homepage": {
"@type": "@id"
}
}
}In order for the absolute IRI to match above, the absolute IRI
needs to be used in the JSON-LD document. Also note that foaf:homepage
will not use the { "@type": "@id" } declaration because
foaf:homepage is not the same as http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/homepage.
That is, terms are looked up in a context using
direct string comparison before the prefix lookup mechanism is applied.
Note
While it is possible to define a compact IRI, or
an absolute IRI to expand to some other unrelated IRI
(for example, foaf:name expanding to
http://example.org/unrelated#species), such usage is strongly
discouraged.
The only exception for using terms in the context is that
circular definitions are not allowed. That is,
a definition of term1 cannot depend on the
definition of term2 if term2 also depends on
term1. For example, the following context definition
is illegal:
Example 47: Illegal circular definition of terms within a context
{
"@context": {
"term1": "term2:foo",
"term2": "term1:bar"
}
}4.12 Sets and Lists §
This section is non-normative.
A JSON-LD author can express multiple values in a compact way by using
arrays. Since graphs do not describe ordering for links
between nodes, arrays in JSON-LD do not provide an ordering of the
contained elements by default. This is exactly the opposite from regular JSON
arrays, which are ordered by default. For example, consider the following
simple document:
Example 48: Multiple values with no inherent order
{
"@id": "http://example.org/people#joebob",
"foaf:nick": [ "joe", "bob", "JB" ]
}The example shown above would result in the following data being generated,
each relating the node to an individual value, with no inherent order:
| Subject |
Property |
Value |
| http://example.org/people#joebob |
foaf:nick |
joe |
| http://example.org/people#joebob |
foaf:nick |
bob |
| http://example.org/people#joebob |
foaf:nick |
JB |
Multiple values may also be expressed using the expanded form:
Example 49: Using an expanded form to set multiple values
{
"@id": "http://example.org/articles/8",
"dc:title": [
{
"@value": "Das Kapital",
"@language": "de"
},
{
"@value": "Capital",
"@language": "en"
}
]
}The example shown above would generate the following data, again with
no inherent order:
| Subject |
Property |
Value |
Language |
| http://example.org/articles/8 |
dc:title |
Das Kapital |
de |
| http://example.org/articles/8 |
dc:title |
Capital |
en |
Although multiple values of a property are typically of the same type,
JSON-LD places no restriction on this, and a property may have values
of different types:
Example 50: Multiple array values of different types
{
"@id": "http://example.org/people#michael",
"dc:name": [
"Michael",
{"@value": "Mike"},
{"@value": "Miguel", "@language": "es"},
{ "@id": "https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4927524" },
42
]
}The example shown above would generate the following data, also with
no inherent order:
| Subject |
Property |
Value |
Language |
Value Type |
| http://example.org/people#michael |
dc:name |
Michael |
|
|
| http://example.org/people#michael |
dc:name |
Mike |
|
|
| http://example.org/people#michael |
dc:name |
Miguel |
es |
|
| http://example.org/people#michael |
dc:name |
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4927524 |
|
|
| http://example.org/people#michael |
dc:name |
42 |
|
xsd:integer |
As the notion of ordered collections is rather important in data
modeling, it is useful to have specific language support. In JSON-LD,
a list may be represented using the @list keyword as follows:
Example 51: An ordered collection of values in JSON-LD
{
"@id": "http://example.org/people#joebob",
"foaf:nick": {
"@list": [ "joe", "bob", "jaybee" ]
}
}This describes the use of this array as being ordered,
and order is maintained when processing a document. If every use of a given multi-valued
property is a list, this may be abbreviated by setting @container
to @list in the context:
Example 52: Specifying that a collection is ordered in the context
{
"@context": {
"nick": {
"@id": "http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/nick",
"@container": "@list"
}
},
"@id": "http://example.org/people#joebob",
"nick": [ "joe", "bob", "jaybee" ]
}Note
List of lists in the form of list objects
are not allowed in this version of JSON-LD. This decision was made due to the
extreme amount of added complexity when processing lists of lists.
While @list is used to describe ordered lists,
the @set keyword is used to describe unordered sets.
The use of @set in the body of a JSON-LD document
is optimized away when processing the document, as it is just syntactic
sugar. However, @set is helpful when used within the context
of a document.
Values of terms associated with an @set or @list container
are always represented in the form of an array,
even if there is just a single value that would otherwise be optimized to
a non-array form in compact form (see
section 4.26 Compacted Document Form). This makes post-processing of
JSON-LD documents easier as the data is always in array form, even if the
array only contains a single value.
4.14 Scoped Contexts §
This section is non-normative.
An expanded term definition can include a @context
property, which defines a context (an embedded context) for values of properties defined using that term. This allows
values to use term definitions, base IRI,
vocabulary mapping or default language which is different from the
node object they are contained in, as if the
context was specified within the value itself.
Example 56: Defining an @context within a term definition
{
"@context": {
"@version": 1.1,
"name": "http://schema.org/name",
"interest": {
"@id": "http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/interest",
"@context": {"@vocab": "http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/"}
}
},
"name": "Manu Sporny",
"interest": {
"@id": "https://www.w3.org/TR/json-ld/",
"name": "JSON-LD",
"topic": "Linking Data"
}
}In this case, the social profile is defined using the schema.org vocabulary, but interest is imported from FOAF, and is used to define a node describing one of Manu's interests where those properties now come from the FOAF vocabulary.
Expanding this document, uses a combination of terms defined in the outer context, and those defined specifically for that term in an embedded context.
Example 57: Expanded document using a scoped context
[{
"http://schema.org/name": [{"@value": "Manu Sporny"}],
"http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/interest": [{
"@id": "https://www.w3.org/TR/json-ld/",
"http://schema.org/name": [{"@value": "JSON-LD"}],
"http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/topic": [{"@value": "Linking Data"}]
}]
}]Scoping can also be performed using a term used as a value of @type:
Example 58: Defining an @context within a term definition used on @type
{
"@context": {
"@version": 1.1,
"name": "http://schema.org/name",
"interest": "http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/interest",
"Document": {
"@id": "http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/Document",
"@context": {"@vocab": "http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/"}
}
},
"@type": "Person",
"name": "Manu Sporny",
"interest": {
"@id": "https://www.w3.org/TR/json-ld/",
"@type": "Document",
"name": "JSON-LD",
"topic": "Linking Data"
}
}Scoping on @type is useful when common properties are used to
relate things of different types, where the vocabularies in use within
different entities calls for different context scoping. For example,
hasPart/partOf may be common terms used in a document, but mean
different things depending on the context.
When expanding, each value of @type is considered
(ordering them lexographically) where that value is also a term in
the active context having its own embedded context. If so, that
embedded context is applied to the active context. When compacting, if
a term is chosen to represent an IRI used as a value of @type where that
term definition also has an embedded context, it is then applied to the
active context to affect further compaction.
Note
The values of @type are unordered, so if multiple
types are listed, the order that scoped contexts are applied is based on
lexicographical ordering.
Note
If a term defines a scoped context, and then that term
is later re-defined, the association of the context defined in the earlier
expanded term definition is lost
within the scope of that re-definition. This is consistent with
term definitions of a term overriding previous term definitions from
earlier less deeply nested definitions, as discussed in
section 4.8 Advanced Context Usage.
Note
Scoped Contexts are a new feature in JSON-LD 1.1, requiring
processing mode set to json-ld-1.1.
4.15 Named Graphs §
This section is non-normative.
At times, it is necessary to make statements about a graph
itself, rather than just a single node. This can be done by
grouping a set of nodes using the @graph
keyword. A developer may also name data expressed using the
@graph keyword by pairing it with an
@id keyword as shown in the following example:
Example 59: Identifying and making statements about a graph
{
"@context": {
"generatedAt": {
"@id": "http://www.w3.org/ns/prov#generatedAtTime",
"@type": "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#date"
},
"Person": "http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/Person",
"name": "http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/name",
"knows": "http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/knows"
},
"@id": "_:graph",
"generatedAt": "2012-04-09",
"@graph": [
{
"@id": "http://manu.sporny.org/about#manu",
"@type": "Person",
"name": "Manu Sporny",
"knows": "http://greggkellogg.net/foaf#me"
}, {
"@id": "http://greggkellogg.net/foaf#me",
"@type": "Person",
"name": "Gregg Kellogg",
"knows": "http://manu.sporny.org/about#manu"
}
]
}The example above expresses a named graph that is identified
by the Blank Node identifier _:graph. That
graph is composed of the statements about Manu and Gregg. Metadata about
the graph itself is expressed via the generatedAt property,
which specifies when the graph was generated. An alternative view of the
information above is represented in table form below:
| Graph |
Subject |
Property |
Value |
Value Type |
| |
_:graph |
prov:generatedAtTime |
2012-04-09 |
xsd:date |
| _:graph |
http://manu.sporny.org/about#manu |
xsd:type |
foaf:Person |
|
| _:graph |
http://manu.sporny.org/about#manu |
foaf:name |
Manu Sporny |
|
| _:graph |
http://manu.sporny.org/about#manu |
foaf:knows |
http://greggkellogg.net/foaf#me |
|
| _:graph |
http://greggkellogg.net/foaf#me |
xsd:type |
foaf:Person |
|
| _:graph |
http://greggkellogg.net/foaf#me |
foaf:name |
Gregg Kellogg |
|
| _:graph |
http://greggkellogg.net/foaf#me |
foaf:knows |
http://manu.sporny.org/about#manu |
|
When a JSON-LD document's top-level structure is an
object that contains no other
properties than @graph and
optionally @context (properties that are not mapped to an
IRI or a keyword are ignored),
@graph is considered to express the otherwise implicit
default graph. This mechanism can be useful when a number
of nodes exist at the document's top level that
share the same context, which is, e.g., the case when a
document is flattened. The
@graph keyword collects such nodes in an array
and allows the use of a shared context.
Example 60: Using @graph to explicitly express the default graph
{
"@context": {},
"@graph": [
{
"@id": "http://manu.sporny.org/about#manu",
"@type": "foaf:Person",
"name": "Manu Sporny",
"knows": "http://greggkellogg.net/foaf#me"
}, {
"@id": "http://greggkellogg.net/foaf#me",
"@type": "foaf:Person",
"name": "Gregg Kellogg",
"knows": "http://manu.sporny.org/about#manu"
}
]
}In this case, embedding doesn't work as each node object
references the other. This is equivalent to using multiple
node objects in array and defining
the @context within each node object:
Example 61: Context needs to be duplicated if @graph is not used
[
{
"@context": {},
"@id": "http://manu.sporny.org/about#manu",
"@type": "foaf:Person",
"name": "Manu Sporny",
"knows": "http://greggkellogg.net/foaf#me"
},
{
"@context": {},
"@id": "http://greggkellogg.net/foaf#me",
"@type": "foaf:Person",
"name": "Gregg Kellogg",
"knows": "http://manu.sporny.org/about#manu"
}
]4.15.1 Graph Containers §
In some cases, it is useful to logically partition data into separate
graphs, without making this explicit within the JSON expression. For
example, a JSON document may contain data against which other metadata is
asserted and it is useful to separate this data in the data model using
the notion of named graphs, without the syntactic overhead
associated with the @graph keyword.
An expanded term definition can use @graph as the
value of @container. This indicates that values of this
term should be considered to be named graphs, where the
graph name is an automatically assigned blank node identifier
creating an implicitly named graph. When expanded, these become
simple graph objects.
An alternative to our example above could use an anonymously named graph
as follows:
Example 62: Implicitly named graph
{
"@context": {
"@version": 1.1,
"generatedAt": {
"@id": "http://www.w3.org/ns/prov#generatedAtTime",
"@type": "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#date"
},
"Person": "http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/Person",
"name": "http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/name",
"knows": "http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/knows",
"claim": {
"@id": "https://w3id.org/credentials#claim",
"@container": "@graph"
}
},
"generatedAt": "2012-04-09",
"claim": [
{
"@id": "http://manu.sporny.org/about#manu",
"@type": "Person",
"name": "Manu Sporny",
"knows": "http://greggkellogg.net/foaf#me"
}, {
"@id": "http://greggkellogg.net/foaf#me",
"@type": "Person",
"name": "Gregg Kellogg",
"knows": "http://manu.sporny.org/about#manu"
}
]
}The example above expresses a named graph that is identified
by the blank node identifier _:claim. That
graph is composed of the statements about Manu and Gregg. Metadata about
the graph itself is expressed via the generatedAt property,
which specifies when the graph was generated. An alternative view of the
information above is represented in table form below:
| Graph |
Subject |
Property |
Value |
Value Type |
| |
_:metadata |
prov:generatedAtTime |
2012-04-09 |
xsd:date |
| |
_:metadata |
cred:claim |
_:claim |
|
| _:claim |
http://manu.sporny.org/about#manu |
xsd:type |
foaf:Person |
|
| _:claim |
http://manu.sporny.org/about#manu |
foaf:name |
Manu Sporny |
|
| _:claim |
http://manu.sporny.org/about#manu |
foaf:knows |
http://greggkellogg.net/foaf#me |
|
| _:claim |
http://greggkellogg.net/foaf#me |
xsd:type |
foaf:Person |
|
| _:claim |
http://greggkellogg.net/foaf#me |
foaf:name |
Gregg Kellogg |
|
| _:claim |
http://greggkellogg.net/foaf#me |
foaf:knows |
http://manu.sporny.org/about#manu |
|
Expanding this graph results in the following:
Example 63: Implicitly named graph after expansion
[{
"http://www.w3.org/ns/prov#generatedAtTime": [{
"@value": "2012-04-09",
"@type": "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#date"
}],
"https://w3id.org/credentials#claim": [{
"@graph": [{
"@id": "http://manu.sporny.org/about#manu",
"@type": ["http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/Person"],
"http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/knows": [{
"@value": "http://greggkellogg.net/foaf#me"
}],
"http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/name": [{
"@value": "Manu Sporny"
}]
}, {
"@id": "http://greggkellogg.net/foaf#me",
"@type": ["http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/Person"],
"http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/knows": [{
"@value": "http://manu.sporny.org/about#manu"
}],
"http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/name": [{
"@value": "Gregg Kellogg"
}]
}]
}]
}]Note
Graph Containers are a new feature in JSON-LD 1.1, requiring
processing mode set to json-ld-1.1.
4.18 Data Indexing §
This section is non-normative.
Databases are typically used to make access to
data more efficient. Developers often extend this sort of functionality into
their application data to deliver similar performance gains. Often this
data does not have any meaning from a Linked Data standpoint, but is
still useful for an application.
JSON-LD introduces the notion of index maps
that can be used to structure data into a form that is
more efficient to access. The data indexing feature allows an author to
structure data using a simple key-value map where the keys do not map
to IRIs. This enables direct access to data
instead of having to scan an array in search of a specific item.
In JSON-LD such data can be specified by associating the
@index keyword with a
@container declaration in the context:
Example 66: Indexing data in JSON-LD
{
"@context": {
"schema": "http://schema.org/",
"name": "schema:name",
"body": "schema:articleBody",
"words": "schema:wordCount",
"post": {
"@id": "schema:blogPost",
"@container": "@index"
}
},
"@id": "http://example.com/",
"@type": "schema:Blog",
"name": "World Financial News",
"post": {
"en": {
"@id": "http://example.com/posts/1/en",
"body": "World commodities were up today with heavy trading of crude oil...",
"words": 1539
},
"de": {
"@id": "http://example.com/posts/1/de",
"body": "Die Werte an Warenbörsen stiegen im Sog eines starken Handels von Rohöl...",
"words": 1204
}
}
}In the example above, the post term has
been marked as an index map. The en and
de keys will be ignored semantically, but preserved
syntactically, by the JSON-LD Processor. This allows a developer to
access the German version of the post using the
following code snippet: obj.post.de.
The interpretation of the data above is expressed in
the table below. Note how the index keys do not appear in the Linked Data
below, but would continue to exist if the document were compacted or
expanded (see section 4.26 Compacted Document Form and
section 4.25 Expanded Document Form) using a JSON-LD processor:
| Subject |
Property |
Value |
| http://example.com/ |
rdf:type |
schema:Blog |
| http://example.com/ |
schema:name |
World Financial News |
| http://example.com/ |
schema:blogPost |
http://example.com/posts/1/en |
| http://example.com/ |
schema:blogPost |
http://example.com/posts/1/de |
| http://example.com/posts/1/en |
schema:articleBody |
World commodities were up today with heavy trading of crude oil... |
| http://example.com/posts/1/en |
schema:wordCount |
1539 |
| http://example.com/posts/1/de |
schema:articleBody |
Die Werte an Warenbörsen stiegen im Sog eines starken Handels von Rohöl... |
| http://example.com/posts/1/de |
schema:wordCount |
1204 |
The value of @container can also
be an array containing both @index and @set.
When compacting, this ensures that a JSON-LD Processor will use
the array form for all values of indexes.
Example 67: Indexing data in JSON-LD with @set representation
{
"@context": {
"@version": 1.1,
"schema": "http://schema.org/",
"name": "schema:name",
"body": "schema:articleBody",
"words": "schema:wordCount",
"post": {
"@id": "schema:blogPost",
"@container": ["@index", "@set"]
}
},
"@id": "http://example.com/",
"@type": "schema:Blog",
"name": "World Financial News",
"post": {
"en": [{
"@id": "http://example.com/posts/1/en",
"body": "World commodities were up today with heavy trading of crude oil...",
"words": 1539
}],
"de": [{
"@id": "http://example.com/posts/1/de",
"body": "Die Werte an Warenbörsen stiegen im Sog eines starken Handels von Rohöl...",
"words": 1204
}]
}
}If the processing mode is set to json-ld-1.1,
the special index @none is used for indexing
data which does not have an associated index, which is useful to maintain
a normalized representation.
Example 68: Indexing data using @none
{
"@context": {
"schema": "http://schema.org/",
"name": "schema:name",
"body": "schema:articleBody",
"words": "schema:wordCount",
"post": {
"@id": "schema:blogPost",
"@container": "@index"
}
},
"@id": "http://example.com/",
"@type": "schema:Blog",
"name": "World Financial News",
"post": {
"en": {
"@id": "http://example.com/posts/1/en",
"body": "World commodities were up today with heavy trading of crude oil...",
"words": 1539
},
"de": {
"@id": "http://example.com/posts/1/de",
"body": "Die Werte an Warenbörsen stiegen im Sog eines starken Handels von Rohöl...",
"words": 1204
},
"@none": {
"body": "Unindexed description",
"words": 20
}
}
}4.19 Named Graph Indexing §
In addition to indexing node objects by index, graph objects may
also be indexed by an index. By using the @graph
container type, introduced in section 4.15.1 Graph Containers
in addition to @index, an object value of such a property is
treated as a key-value map where the keys do not map to IRIs, but
are taken from an @index property associated with named graphs
which are their values. When expanded, these must be simple graph objects
The following example describes a default graph referencing multiple named
graphs using an index map.
Example 69: Indexing graph data in JSON-LD
{
"@context": {
"@version": 1.1,
"schema": "http://schema.org/",
"name": "schema:name",
"body": "schema:articleBody",
"words": "schema:wordCount",
"post": {
"@id": "schema:blogPost",
"@container": ["@graph", "@index"]
}
},
"@id": "http://example.com/",
"@type": "schema:Blog",
"name": "World Financial News",
"post": {
"en": {
"@id": "http://example.com/posts/1/en",
"body": "World commodities were up today with heavy trading of crude oil...",
"words": 1539
},
"de": {
"@id": "http://example.com/posts/1/de",
"body": "Die Werte an Warenbörsen stiegen im Sog eines starken Handels von Rohöl...",
"words": 1204
}
}
}This expands to the following:
Example 70: Indexed graph data after expansion
[{
"@id": "http://example.com/",
"@type": ["http://schema.org/Blog"],
"http://schema.org/blogPost": [{
"@graph": [{
"@id": "http://example.com/posts/1/de",
"http://schema.org/articleBody": [{
"@value": "Die Werte an Warenbörsen stiegen im Sog eines starken Handels von Rohöl..."
}],
"http://schema.org/wordCount": [{"@value": 1204}]
}],
"@index": "de"
}, {
"@graph": [{
"@id": "http://example.com/posts/1/en",
"http://schema.org/articleBody": [{
"@value": "World commodities were up today with heavy trading of crude oil..."
}],
"http://schema.org/wordCount": [{"@value": 1539}]
}],
"@index": "en"
}],
"http://schema.org/name": [{"@value": "World Financial News"}]
}]When expressed as Quads, this becomes the following:
| Graph |
Subject |
Property |
Value |
Value Type |
| |
http://example.com/ |
rdf:type |
schema:Blog |
|
| |
http://example.com/ |
schema:name |
World Financial News |
|
| |
http://example.com/ |
schema:blogPost |
_:b1 |
|
| |
http://example.com/ |
schema:blogPost |
_:b2 |
|
| _:b1 |
http://example.com/posts/1/de |
schema:wordCount |
1204 |
xsd:integer |
| _:b1 |
http://example.com/posts/1/de |
schema:articleBody |
Die Werte an Warenbörsen stiegen im Sog eines starken Handels von Rohöl... |
|
| _:b2 |
http://example.com/posts/1/en |
schema:wordCount |
1539 |
xsd:integer |
| _:b2 |
http://example.com/posts/1/en |
schema:articleBody |
World commodities were up today with heavy trading of crude oil... |
|
As with index maps, when used with @graph, a container may also
include @set to ensure that key values are always contained in an array.
If the processing mode is set to json-ld-1.1,
the special index @none is used for indexing
graphs which does not have an @index key, which is useful to maintain
a normalized representation. Note, however, that
compacting a document where multiple unidentified named graphs are
compacted using the @none index will result in the content
of those graphs being merged. To prevent this, give each graph a distinct
@index key.
Example 71: Indexing graphs using @none for no index
{
"@context": {
"@version": 1.1,
"schema": "http://schema.org/",
"name": "schema:name",
"body": "schema:articleBody",
"words": "schema:wordCount",
"post": {
"@id": "schema:blogPost",
"@container": ["@graph", "@index"]
}
},
"@id": "http://example.com/",
"@type": "schema:Blog",
"name": "World Financial News",
"post": {
"en": {
"@id": "http://example.com/posts/1/en",
"body": "World commodities were up today with heavy trading of crude oil...",
"words": 1539
},
"@none": {
"@id": "http://example.com/posts/1/de",
"body": "Die Werte an Warenbörsen stiegen im Sog eines starken Handels von Rohöl...",
"words": 1204
}
}
}This expands to the following:
Example 72: Indexed languaged-tagged strings with @none after expansion
[{
"@id": "http://example.com/",
"@type": ["http://schema.org/Blog"],
"http://schema.org/blogPost": [{
"@graph": [{
"@id": "http://example.com/posts/1/de",
"http://schema.org/articleBody": [{
"@value": "Die Werte an Warenbörsen stiegen im Sog eines starken Handels von Rohöl..."
}],
"http://schema.org/wordCount": [{"@value": 1204}]
}]
}, {
"@graph": [{
"@id": "http://example.com/posts/1/en",
"http://schema.org/articleBody": [{
"@value": "World commodities were up today with heavy trading of crude oil..."
}],
"http://schema.org/wordCount": [{"@value": 1539}]
}],
"@index": "en"
}],
"http://schema.org/name": [{"@value": "World Financial News"}]
}]4.21 Node Identifier Indexing §
This section is non-normative.
In addition to index maps, JSON-LD introduces the notion of id maps
for structuring data. The id indexing feature allows an author to
structure data using a simple key-value map where the keys map
to IRIs. This enables direct access to associated node objects
instead of having to scan an array in search of a specific item.
In JSON-LD such data can be specified by associating the
@id keyword with a
@container declaration in the context:
Example 76: Indexing data in JSON-LD by node identifiers
{
"@context": {
"@version": 1.1,
"schema": "http://schema.org/",
"name": "schema:name",
"body": "schema:articleBody",
"words": "schema:wordCount",
"post": {
"@id": "schema:blogPost",
"@container": "@id"
}
},
"@id": "http://example.com/",
"@type": "schema:Blog",
"name": "World Financial News",
"post": {
"http://example.com/posts/1/en": {
"body": "World commodities were up today with heavy trading of crude oil...",
"words": 1539
},
"http://example.com/posts/1/de": {
"body": "Die Werte an Warenbörsen stiegen im Sog eines starken Handels von Rohöl...",
"words": 1204
}
}
}In the example above, the post term has
been marked as an id map. The http://example.com/posts/1/en and
http://example.com/posts/1/de keys will be interpreted
as the @id property of the node object value.
The interpretation of the data above is exactly the same
as that in section 4.18 Data Indexing
using a JSON-LD processor.
The value of @container can also
be an array containing both @id and @set.
When compacting, this ensures that a JSON-LD processor will use
the array form for all values of node identifiers.
Example 77: Indexing data in JSON-LD by node identifiers with @set representation
{
"@context": {
"@version": 1.1,
"schema": "http://schema.org/",
"name": "schema:name",
"body": "schema:articleBody",
"words": "schema:wordCount",
"post": {
"@id": "schema:blogPost",
"@container": ["@id", "@set"]
}
},
"@id": "http://example.com/",
"@type": "schema:Blog",
"name": "World Financial News",
"post": {
"http://example.com/posts/1/en": [{
"body": "World commodities were up today with heavy trading of crude oil...",
"words": 1539
}],
"http://example.com/posts/1/de": [{
"body": "Die Werte an Warenbörsen stiegen im Sog eines starken Handels von Rohöl...",
"words": 1204
}]
}
}The special index @none is used for indexing
node objects which do not have an @id, which is useful to maintain
a normalized representation. The @none index may also be
a term which expands to @none, such as the term none
used in the example below.
Example 78: Indexing data in JSON-LD by node identifiers using @none
{
"@context": {
"@version": 1.1,
"schema": "http://schema.org/",
"name": "schema:name",
"body": "schema:articleBody",
"words": "schema:wordCount",
"post": {
"@id": "schema:blogPost",
"@container": "@id"
},
"none": "@none"
},
"@id": "http://example.com/",
"@type": "schema:Blog",
"name": "World Financial News",
"post": {
"http://example.com/posts/1/en": {
"body": "World commodities were up today with heavy trading of crude oil...",
"words": 1539
},
"http://example.com/posts/1/de": {
"body": "Die Werte an Warenbörsen stiegen im Sog eines starken Handels von Rohöl...",
"words": 1204
},
"none": {
"body": "Description for object within an @id",
"words": 20
}
}
}4.22 Named Graph Indexing by Identifier §
In addition to indexing node objects by identifier, graph objects may
also be indexed by their graph name. By using the @graph
container type, introduced in section 4.15.1 Graph Containers
in addition to @id, an object value of such a property is
treated as a key-value map where the keys represent the identifiers of named graphs
which are their values.
The following example describes a default graph referencing multiple named
graphs using an id map.
Example 79: Referencing named graphs using an id map
{
"@context": {
"@version": 1.1,
"generatedAt": {
"@id": "http://www.w3.org/ns/prov#generatedAtTime",
"@type": "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#date"
},
"Person": "http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/Person",
"name": "http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/name",
"knows": "http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/knows",
"graphMap": {
"@id": "http://example.org/graphMap",
"@container": ["@graph", "@id"]
}
},
"@id": "_:graph",
"generatedAt": "2012-04-09",
"graphMap": {
"_:manu": {
"@id": "http://manu.sporny.org/about#manu",
"@type": "Person",
"name": "Manu Sporny",
"knows": "http://greggkellogg.net/foaf#me"
},
"_:gregg": {
"@id": "http://greggkellogg.net/foaf#me",
"@type": "Person",
"name": "Gregg Kellogg",
"knows": "http://manu.sporny.org/about#manu"
}
}
}This expands to the following:
Example 80: Referencing named graphs after expansion
[{
"@id": "_:graph",
"http://example.org/graphMap": [{
"@id": "_:gregg",
"@graph": [{
"@id": "http://greggkellogg.net/foaf#me",
"@type": ["http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/Person"],
"http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/knows": [{"@value": "http://manu.sporny.org/about#manu"}],
"http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/name": [{"@value": "Gregg Kellogg"}]
}]
}, {
"@id": "_:manu",
"@graph": [{
"@id": "http://manu.sporny.org/about#manu",
"@type": [
"http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/Person"
],
"http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/knows": [
{
"@value": "http://greggkellogg.net/foaf#me"
}
],
"http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/name": [
{
"@value": "Manu Sporny"
}
]
}]
}],
"http://www.w3.org/ns/prov#generatedAtTime": [{
"@value": "2012-04-09",
"@type": "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#date"
}]
}]When expressed as Quads, this becomes the following:
| Graph |
Subject |
Property |
Value |
Value Type |
| |
_:graph |
prov:generatedAtTime |
2012-04-09 |
xsd:date |
| |
_:graph |
http://example.org/graphMap |
http://manu.sporny.org/about#manu |
|
| |
_:graph |
http://example.org/graphMap |
http://greggkellogg.net/foaf#me |
|
| _:manu |
http://manu.sporny.org/about#manu |
xsd:type |
foaf:Person |
|
| _:manu |
http://manu.sporny.org/about#manu |
foaf:name |
Manu Sporny |
|
| _:manu |
http://manu.sporny.org/about#manu |
foaf:knows |
http://greggkellogg.net/foaf#me |
|
| _:gregg |
http://greggkellogg.net/foaf#me |
xsd:type |
foaf:Person |
|
| _:gregg |
http://greggkellogg.net/foaf#me |
foaf:name |
Gregg Kellogg |
|
| _:gregg |
http://greggkellogg.net/foaf#me |
foaf:knows |
http://manu.sporny.org/about#manu |
|
As with id maps, when used with @graph, a container may also
include @set to ensure that key values are always contained in an array.
As with id maps, the special index @none is used for indexing
named graphs which do not have an @id, which is useful to maintain
a normalized representation. The @none index may also be
a term which expands to @none.
Note, however, that if multiple graphs are represented without
an @id, they will be merged on expansion. To prevent this,
use @none judiciously, and consider giving graphs
their own distinct identifier.
Example 81: Referencing named graphs using an id map with @none
{
"@context": {
"@version": 1.1,
"generatedAt": {
"@id": "http://www.w3.org/ns/prov#generatedAtTime",
"@type": "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#date"
},
"Person": "http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/Person",
"name": "http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/name",
"knows": "http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/knows",
"graphMap": {
"@id": "http://example.org/graphMap",
"@container": ["@graph", "@id"]
}
},
"@id": "_:graph",
"generatedAt": "2012-04-09",
"graphMap": {
"@none": [{
"@id": "http://manu.sporny.org/about#manu",
"@type": "Person",
"name": "Manu Sporny",
"knows": "http://greggkellogg.net/foaf#me"
}, {
"@id": "http://greggkellogg.net/foaf#me",
"@type": "Person",
"name": "Gregg Kellogg",
"knows": "http://manu.sporny.org/about#manu"
}]
}
}Note
Graph Containers are a new feature in JSON-LD 1.1, requiring
processing mode set to json-ld-1.1.
4.23 Node Type Indexing §
This section is non-normative.
In addition to id and index maps, JSON-LD introduces the notion of type maps
for structuring data. The type indexing feature allows an author to
structure data using a simple key-value map where the keys map
to IRIs. This enables data to be structured based on the @type
of specific node objects.
In JSON-LD such data can be specified by associating the
@type keyword with a
@container declaration in the context:
Example 82: Indexing data in JSON-LD by type
{
"@context": {
"@version": 1.1,
"schema": "http://schema.org/",
"name": "schema:name",
"affiliation": {
"@id": "schema:affiliation",
"@container": "@type"
}
},
"name": "Manu Sporny",
"affiliation": {
"schema:Corporation": {
"@id": "https://digitalbazaar.com/",
"name": "Digital Bazaar"
},
"schema:ProfessionalService": {
"@id": "https://spec-ops.io",
"name": "Spec-Ops"
}
}
}In the example above, the affiliation term has
been marked as an type map. The schema:Corporation and
schema:ProfessionalService keys will be interpreted
as the @type property of the node object value.
The value of @container can also
be an array containing both @type and @set.
When compacting, this ensures that a JSON-LD processor will use
the array form for all values of types.
Example 83: Indexing data in JSON-LD by type with @set representation
{
"@context": {
"@version": 1.1,
"schema": "http://schema.org/",
"name": "schema:name",
"affiliation": {
"@id": "schema:affiliation",
"@container": ["@type", "@set"]
}
},
"name": "Manu Sporny",
"affiliation": {
"schema:Corporation": [{
"@id": "https://digitalbazaar.com/",
"name": "Digital Bazaar"
}],
"schema:ProfessionalService": [{
"@id": "https://spec-ops.io",
"name": "Spec-Ops"
}]
}
}The special index @none is used for indexing
node objects which do not have an @type, which is useful to maintain
a normalized representation. The @none index may also be
a term which expands to @none, such as the term none
used in the example below.
Example 84: Indexing data in JSON-LD by type using @none
{
"@context": {
"@version": 1.1,
"schema": "http://schema.org/",
"name": "schema:name",
"affiliation": {
"@id": "schema:affiliation",
"@container": "@type"
},
"none": "@none"
},
"name": "Manu Sporny",
"affiliation": {
"schema:Corporation": {
"@id": "https://digitalbazaar.com/",
"name": "Digital Bazaar"
},
"schema:ProfessionalService": {
"@id": "https://spec-ops.io",
"name": "Spec-Ops"
},
"none": {
"@id": "http://greggkellogg.net/",
"name": "Gregg Kellogg"
}
}
}As with id maps, when used with @type, a container may also
include @set to ensure that key values are always contained in an array.
6. JSON-LD Grammar §
This appendix restates the syntactic conventions described in the
previous sections more formally.
A JSON-LD document MUST be valid JSON text as described
in [RFC7159], or some format that can be represented
in the JSON-LD internal representation that is equivalent to
valid JSON text.
A JSON-LD document MUST be a single node object,
a JSON object consisting of only
the members @context and/or @graph,
or an array or zero or more node objects.
In contrast to JSON, in JSON-LD the keys in objects
MUST be unique.
Note
JSON-LD allows keywords to be aliased
(see section 4.17 Aliasing Keywords for details). Whenever a keyword is
discussed in this grammar, the statements also apply to an alias for
that keyword. For example, if the active context
defines the term id as an alias for @id,
that alias may be legitimately used as a substitution for @id.
Note that keyword aliases are not expanded during context
processing.
6.2 Node Objects §
A node object represents zero or more properties of a
node in the graph serialized by the
JSON-LD document. A JSON object is a
node object if it exists outside of a JSON-LD
context and:
- it is not the top-most JSON object in the JSON-LD document consisting
of no other members than
@graph and @context,
- it does not contain the
@value, @list,
or @set keywords, and
- it is not a graph object.
The properties of a node in
a graph may be spread among different
node objects within a document. When
that happens, the keys of the different
node objects need to be merged to create the
properties of the resulting node.
A node object MUST be a JSON object. All keys
which are not IRIs, compact IRIs, terms valid in the
active context, or one of the following keywords
(or alias of such a keyword)
MUST be ignored when processed:
@context,@id,@graph,@nest,@type,@reverse, or@index
If the node object contains the @context
key, its value MUST be null, an absolute IRI,
a relative IRI, a context definition, or
an array composed of any of these.
If the node object contains the @id key,
its value MUST be an absolute IRI, a relative IRI,
or a compact IRI (including
blank node identifiers).
See section 3.3 Node Identifiers,
section 4.4 Compact IRIs, and
section 4.16 Identifying Blank Nodes for further discussion on
@id values.
If the node object contains the @graph
key, its value MUST be
a node object or
an array of zero or more node objects.
If the node object contains an @id keyword,
its value is used as the graph name of a named graph.
See section 4.15 Named Graphs for further discussion on
@graph values. As a special case, if a JSON object
contains no keys other than @graph and @context, and the
JSON object is the root of the JSON-LD document, the
JSON object is not treated as a node object; this
is used as a way of defining node objects
that may not form a connected graph. This allows a
context to be defined which is shared by all of the constituent
node objects.
If the node object contains the @type
key, its value MUST be either an absolute IRI, a
relative IRI, a compact IRI
(including blank node identifiers),
a term defined in the active context expanding into an absolute IRI, or
an array of any of these.
See section 3.4 Specifying the Type for further discussion on
@type values.
If the node object contains the @reverse key,
its value MUST be a JSON object containing members representing reverse
properties. Each value of such a reverse property MUST be an absolute IRI,
a relative IRI, a compact IRI, a blank node identifier,
a node object or an array containing a combination of these.
If the node object contains the @index key,
its value MUST be a string. See
section 4.18 Data Indexing for further discussion
on @index values.
If the node object contains the @nest key,
its value MUST be an JSON object or an array of JSON objects
which MUST NOT include a value object. See
section 6.10 Property Nesting for further discussion
on @nest values.
Keys in a node object that are not
keywords MAY expand to an absolute IRI
using the active context. The values associated with keys that expand
to an absolute IRI MUST be one of the following:
- string,
- number,
- true,
- false,
- null,
- node object,
- graph object,
- value object,
- list object,
- set object,
- an array of zero or more of any of the possibilities above,
- a language map,
- an index map,
- an id map, or
- an type map
6.3 Graph Objects §
A graph object represents a named graph, which MAY include
include an explicit graph name.
A JSON object is a graph object if
it exists outside of a JSON-LD context,
it is not a node object,
it is not the top-most JSON object in the JSON-LD document, and
it consists of no members other than @graph,
@index, @id
and @context, or an alias of one of these keywords.
If the graph object contains the @context
key, its value MUST be null, an absolute IRI,
a relative IRI, a context definition, or
an array composed of any of these.
If the graph object contains the @id key,
its value is used as the identifier (graph name) of a named graph, and
MUST be an absolute IRI, a relative IRI,
or a compact IRI (including
blank node identifiers).
See section 3.3 Node Identifiers,
section 4.4 Compact IRIs, and
section 4.16 Identifying Blank Nodes for further discussion on
@id values.
A graph object without an @id member is also a
simple graph object and represents a named graph without an
explicit identifier, although in the data model it still has a
graph name, which is an implicitly allocated
blank node identifier.
The value of the @graph key MUST be
a node object or
an array of zero or more node objects.
See section 4.15 Named Graphs for further discussion on
@graph values..
6.4 Value Objects §
A value object is used to explicitly associate a type or a
language with a value to create a typed value or a language-tagged
string.
A value object MUST be a JSON object containing the
@value key. It MAY also contain an @type,
an @language, an @index, or an @context key but MUST NOT contain
both an @type and an @language key at the same time.
A value object MUST NOT contain any other keys that expand to an
absolute IRI or keyword.
The value associated with the @value key MUST be either a
string, a number, true,
false or null.
The value associated with the @type key MUST be a
term, a compact IRI,
an absolute IRI, a string which can be turned
into an absolute IRI using the vocabulary mapping, or null.
The value associated with the @language key MUST have the
lexical form described in [BCP47], or be null.
The value associated with the @index key MUST be a
string.
See section 4.5 Typed Values and
section 4.10 String Internationalization
for more information on value objects.
6.5 Lists and Sets §
A list represents an ordered set of values. A set
represents an unordered set of values. Unless otherwise specified,
arrays are unordered in JSON-LD. As such, the
@set keyword, when used in the body of a JSON-LD document,
represents just syntactic sugar which is optimized away when processing the document.
However, it is very helpful when used within the context of a document. Values
of terms associated with an @set or @list container
will always be represented in the form of an array when a document
is processed—even if there is just a single value that would otherwise be optimized to
a non-array form in compact document form.
This simplifies post-processing of the data as the data is always in a
deterministic form.
A list object MUST be a JSON object that contains no
keys that expand to an absolute IRI or keyword other
than @list, @context, and @index.
A set object MUST be a JSON object that contains no
keys that expand to an absolute IRI or keyword other
than @set, @context, and @index.
Please note that the @index key will be ignored when being processed.
In both cases, the value associated with the keys @list and @set
MUST be one of the following types:
See section 4.12 Sets and Lists for further discussion on sets and lists.
6.7 Index Maps §
An index map allows keys that have no semantic meaning,
but should be preserved regardless, to be used in JSON-LD documents.
An index map may
be used as a term value within a node object if the
term is defined with @container set to @index,
or an array containing both @index and @set
.
The values of the members of an index map MUST be one
of the following types:
See section 4.18 Data Indexing for further information on this topic.
Index Maps may also be used to map indexes to associated
named graphs, if the term is defined with @container
set to an array containing both @graph and
@index, and optionally including @set. The
value consists of the node objects contained within the named
graph which is named using the referencing key, which can be
represented as a simple graph object.
6.8 Id Maps §
An id map is used to associate an IRI with a value that allows easy
programmatic access. An id map may be used as a term value within a node object if the term
is defined with @container set to @id,
or an array containing both @id and @set.
The keys of an id map MUST be IRIs
(relative IRI, compact IRI (including blank node identifiers), or absolute IRI),
the keyword @none,
or a term which expands to @none,
and the values MUST be node objects.
If the value contains a property expanding to @id, it's value MUST
be equivalent to the referencing key. Otherwise, the property from the value is used as
the @id of the node object value when expanding.
Id Maps may also be used to map graph names to their
named graphs, if the term is defined with @container
set to an array containing both @graph and @id,
and optionally including @set. The value consists of the
node objects contained within the named graph
which is named using the referencing key.
6.9 Type Maps §
A type map is used to associate an IRI with a value that allows easy
programmatic access. A type map may be used as a term value within a node object if the term
is defined with @container set to @type,
or an array containing both @type and @set.
The keys of a type map MUST be IRIs
(relative IRI, compact IRI (including blank node identifiers), or absolute IRI),
the keyword @none,
or a term which expands to @none,
and the values MUST be node objects.
If the value contains a property expanding to @type, and it's value
is contains the referencing key after suitable expansion of both the referencing key
and the value, then the node object already contains the type. Otherwise, the property from the value is
added as a @type of the node object value when expanding.
6.11 Context Definitions §
A context definition defines a local context in a
node object.
A context definition MUST be a JSON object whose
keys MUST be either terms, compact IRIs, absolute IRIs,
or one of the keywords @language, @base,
@vocab, or @version.
If the context definition has an @language key,
its value MUST have the lexical form described in [BCP47] or be null.
If the context definition has an @base key,
its value MUST be an absolute IRI, a relative IRI,
or null.
If the context definition has an @vocab key,
its value MUST be a absolute IRI, a compact IRI,
a blank node identifier,
an empty string (""),
a term, or null.
If the context definition has an @version key,
its value MUST be a number with the value 1.1.
The value of keys that are not keywords MUST be either an
absolute IRI, a compact IRI, a term,
a blank node identifier, a keyword, null,
or an expanded term definition.
An expanded term definition is used to describe the mapping
between a term and its expanded identifier, as well as other
properties of the value associated with the term when it is
used as key in a node object.
An expanded term definition MUST be a JSON object
composed of zero or more keys from
@id,
@reverse,
@type,
@language,
@context,
@prefix, or
@container. An
expanded term definition SHOULD NOT contain any other keys.
If the term being defined is not a compact IRI or
absolute IRI and the active context does not have an
@vocab mapping, the expanded term definition MUST
include the @id key.
If the expanded term definition contains the @id
keyword, its value MUST be null, an absolute IRI,
a blank node identifier, a compact IRI, a term,
or a keyword.
If an expanded term definition has an @reverse member,
it MUST NOT have @id or @nest members at the same time,
its value MUST be an absolute IRI,
a blank node identifier, a compact IRI, or a term. If an
@container member exists, its value MUST be null,
@set, or @index.
If the expanded term definition contains the @type
keyword, its value MUST be an absolute IRI, a
compact IRI, a term, null, or one of the
keywords @id or @vocab.
If the expanded term definition contains the @language keyword,
its value MUST have the lexical form described in [BCP47] or be null.
If the expanded term definition contains the @container
keyword, its value MUST be either
@list,
@set,
@language,
@index,
@id,
@graph,
@type, or be
null
or an array containing exactly any one of those keywords, or a
combination of @set and any of @index,
@id, @graph, @type,
@language in any order
.
@container may also be an array
containing @graph along with either @id or
@index and also optionally including @set.
If the value
is @language, when the term is used outside of the
@context, the associated value MUST be a language map.
If the value is @index, when the term is used outside of
the @context, the associated value MUST be an
index map.
If an expanded term definition has an @context member,
it MUST be a valid context definition.
If the expanded term definition contains the @nest
keyword, its value MUST be either @nest, or a term
which expands to @nest.
If the expanded term definition contains the @prefix
keyword, its value MUST be true or false.
Terms MUST NOT be used in a circular manner. That is,
the definition of a term cannot depend on the definition of another term if that other
term also depends on the first term.
See section 3.1 The Context for further discussion on contexts.
