Prerequisites
- TerminusDB running locally — see Docker setup for instructions
- A database with RDF-style data (custom IRIs)
- Familiarity with GraphQL basics (getting started)
What you'll achieve By the end of this guide, you will know how to query documents with custom RDF IRIs using GraphQL.
GraphQL is a data-oriented language with queries composed of queries, arguments and fields.
TerminusDB on the other hand is an RDF Knowledge Graph database with classes and properties, and with IRIs (URIs) as identifiers to connect JSON documents, JSON subdocuments and managing database IDs.
The TerminusDB GraphQL endpoint enables a data-informed ability to process typed RDF knowledge graphs with IRIs as identifiers, using GraphQL. This enables a fantastic interoperability between the worlds of graphs and traditional databases.
This means that id:s will not have the prefixed shorthand IRIs that are seen in the regular document interface of TerminusDB, but the fully qualified IRIs that uses the @base prefix.
For instance, a document might be retrieved by supplying the id as a variable in the following way, expecting the full IRI:
query getPerson($id: ID) {
Person(id: $id) {
name
}
}With variables:
{
"id": "terminusdb:///data/Person/Luke%20Skywalker"
}Note that the id value must use the full IRI (starting with the @base prefix, typically terminusdb:///data/), not the short-form document identifier used in the document API.
IRI handling in results
When querying documents via GraphQL, the _id field returns the full IRI of each document:
query {
Person(limit: 2) {
_id
name
}
}This returns fully qualified IRIs such as terminusdb:///data/Person/Luke%20Skywalker rather than the shortened Person/Luke%20Skywalker form seen in the document interface.
Relationship with WOQL
The same IRI behaviour is present in WOQL queries, where identifiers are full IRIs. Read more about prefixed IRIs and RDF contexts to understand how TerminusDB manages document identifiers across its interfaces.