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Jelly-JVM – getting started with Jena/RDF4J plugins

This guide explains how to use Jelly-JVM with Apache Jena or RDF4J as a plugin, without writing a single line of code. Jelly-JVM provides plugin JARs that you can simply drop in the appropriate directory to get Jelly format support in your application.

Installation

Apache Jena, Apache Jena Fuseki

You can simply add Jelly format support to Apache Jena or Apacha Jena Fuseki with Jelly's plugin JAR.

  • First, download the plugin JAR. You can download the latest development version from here, or you can go the the releases page on GitHub to download a different version of the jelly-jena-plugin.jar file.
    • Note that the Jelly version must be compatible with your Apache Jena version. Consult the compatibility table.
  • Place the file in your classpath:
    • For Apache Jena Fuseki, simply place the file in $FUSEKI_BASE/extra/ directory. $FUSEKI_BASE is the directory usually called run where you have files such as config.ttl and shiro.ini. You will most likely need to create the extra directory yourself.
    • For Apache Jena, place the file in the lib/ directory of your Jena installation.
    • For other applications, consult the manual of the application.
  • You can now use Jelly format for parsing, serialization, and streaming serialization in your Jena application.

Content negotiation in Fuseki

Currently Apache Jena Fuseki will not properly handle content negotiation for the Jelly format, due to the supported content types being hardcoded in Fuseki (see upstream issue).

Until that is fixed, you can use Jelly with Fuseki endpoints by specifying the output=application/x-jelly-rdf parameter (either in the URL or in the URL-encoded form body) when querying the endpoint.

Eclipse RDF4J

You can simply add Jelly format support to an application based on RDF4J with Jelly's plugin JAR.

  • First, download the plugin JAR. You can download the latest development version from here, or you can go the the releases page on GitHub to download a specific version of the jelly-rdf4j-plugin.jar file.
    • Note that the Jelly version must be compatible with your RDF4J version. Consult the compatibility table.
  • Place the file in your classpath. Consult the manual of your application for the exact location.
  • You can now use Jelly format for parsing, serialization, and streaming serialization in your RDF4J application.

Supported features

The Jelly-JVM plugin JARs provide the following features:

  • Full support for parsing and serialization of RDF data (triples and quads) in the Jelly format.
    • In Apache Jena also the stream serialization is supported.
  • Recognizing the .jelly file extension.
  • Recognizing the application/x-jelly-rdf media type.

The Jelly format is registered under the name jelly in the RDF libraries, so you can use it in the same way as other formats like Turtle, RDF/XML, or JSON-LD.

See also