Querying local files from the command line

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    Using Comunica SPARQL File, you can query over RDF files that are stored on your local machine.

    While Comunica SPARQL allows you to query sources exposed via URLs on the command line, it does not allow you to query RDF local files. This is because Comunica SPARQL can be used in a variety of use cases, of which deployment on a public server is one. In some of these cases, the ability to access the local file system can imply a major security risk, which is why we require the use of a separate package.

    1. Installation

    Since Comunica runs on Node.js, make sure you have Node.js installed on your machine.

    Next, we can install Comunica SPARQL on our machine:

    $ npm install -g @comunica/query-sparql-file

    2. SPARQL querying over one local file

    After installing Comunica SPARQL, you will be given access to several commands including comunica-sparql-file, which allows you to execute SPARQL queries from the command line.

    Just like comunica-sparql, this command requires one or more URLs to be provided as sources to query over. As last argument, as SPARQL query string can be provided.

    For example, the following query retrieves the first 100 triples from path/to/my/file.ttl:

    $ comunica-sparql-file path/to/my/file.ttl \
    "SELECT * WHERE { ?s ?p ?o } LIMIT 100"

    3. SPARQL querying over one remote file

    Next to local file, also remote files identified by a URL can be queried:

    $ comunica-sparql-file https://www.rubensworks.net/ \
    "SELECT * WHERE { ?s ?p ?o } LIMIT 100"

    4. Learn more

    This guide only discussed the basic functionality of comunica-sparql-file. You can learn more options by invoking the help command, or by reading the Comunica SPARQL documentation:

    $ comunica-sparql-file --help