Schema.org Client Library for Java

• Overview
• Highlighted Features
• Quick Start
• Important Usage Notes
• Example Code
• Dependencies
• Links

Overview

The Schema.org Client Library for Java is a library for creating schema.org entities. The entities can be easily serialized and deserialized with JSON-LD format by using the JSON-LD serializer in the library.

Note that it is based on a 2016 release snapshot of Schema.org, and is not currently actively being developed. If you are interested to see updates (e.g. for Schema.org 3.4 or later), please comment in Issue #7.

Library Highlights

The library has the following highlights:

• Fully supports the vocabulary defined in the http://schema.org namespace as well as vocabulary defined in the http://schema.googleapis.com namespace.
• Fully supports type multiple inheritance, multiple values per property in schema.org.
• Every schema.org type has a corresponding Java interface which provides convenient setter methods for setting the values of the properties of that particular type.
• Supports serializing and deserializing schema.org objects to and from JSON-LD formats.

Limitations

• The library is based on code generated from a specific release of schema.org. It may not support more recent additions and changes, or third party extensions.

Quick Start

Below is a simple example of creating schema.org Thing object, serialize it into JSON-LD format and deserialize JSON-LD back to a Thing object.

JsonLdSerializer serializer = new JsonLdSerializer(true /* setPrettyPrinting */);
Thing object =
    CoreFactory.newThingBuilder()
        .addUrl("http://example.com")
        .addName("John")
        .addProperty("customPropertyName", "customPropertyValue")
        .build();
try {
  String jsonLdStr = serializer.serialize(object);
  List<Thing> list = serializer.deserialize(jsonLdStr);
  Thing thing = list.get(0);
  String name = ((Text) thing.getNameList().get(0)).getValue();
  String customPropertyValue =
      ((Text) thing.getProperty("customPropertyName").get(0)).getValue();
} catch (JsonLdSyntaxException e) {
  // Errors related to JSON-LD format and schema.org terms in JSON-LD
} catch (JsonIOException e) {
  // Errors related to JSON format
}

Important Usage Notes

Some important usage recommendations are given below:

Package Structure

The Java Classes are organized into the following pakcages:

• com.google.schemaorg (basic interfaces and JSON-LD serializer)
• com.google.schemaorg.core (library for http://schema.org namespace vocabulary)
• com.google.schemaorg.core.datatype (DataType primitives)
• com.google.schemaorg.goog (library for http://schema.googleapis.com namespace vocabulary)

Builders

In the Java library, every schema.org type has a corresponding Java interface with the same name as the schema.org type. The Java interfaces are designed with the Builder Pattern. Developers don’t need to know any details about implementation of these interfaces, because all the operations on the object will be performed through the interface.

CoreFactory and GoogFactory classes provide static factory methods that return a Builder object for a specific schema.org type. In the builder interfaces, there are add[PropertyName] methods for each property which could be set in the corresponding schema.org type. Multiple values can be added to a property as documented by schema.org. The build() method should be called to create an immutable concrete instance of that type. A get[PropertyName]List method is defined for each property. The get[PropertyName]List method will return an [ImmutableList] (https://google.github.io/guava/releases/snapshot/api/docs/com/google/common/collect/ImmutableList.html) containing all the values for the specific property. In order to add any custom property into any schema.org type, the addProperty and getProperty methods are defined in the interface for each schema.org type.

DataType

DataType is defined in the package com.google.schemaorg.core.datatype. To create a primitive DataType object, the static method of() in each type should be used.

For example:

• Text.of(“help”)
• URL.of(“http://schema.org")
• Time.of(“08:32”)
• Date.of(“2016-01-28”)
• DateTime.of(“2016-01-28 12:00”)
• Number.of(“42”)
• Integer.of(42)
• Float.of(3.14)
• Boolean has limited possible values of True and False. It is defined as an enum type in this library. Boolean is the interface and it has 2 enum values: BooleanEnum.TRUE and BooleanEnum.FALSE.

Enumeration

Subtypes of Enumeration are handled slightly differently. For each Enumeration subtype in schema.org, a Java interface is created which provides accessor methods for the properties of that type. The name of the interface is the same name as the schema.org type. In addition, a Java Enum class is also created to hold the enum values of that schema.org Enumeration type. The name of the Enum class is type name with Enum appended.

For example, ActionStatusType is a subtype of Enumeration in schema.org. It has the following values:

• ActiveActionStatus
• CompletedActionStatus
• FailedActionStatus
• PotentialActionStatus

In the Java library, an interface named ActionStatusType is defined and a Java Enum class named ActionStatusTypeEnum is defined which implements the ActionStatusType interface. The ActionStatusTypeEnum contains the following enum values:

• ACTIVE_ACTION_STATUS
• COMPLETED_ACTION_STATUS
• FAILED_ACTION_STATUS
• POTENTIAL_ACTION_STATUS

JSON-LD

All the schema.org type builders also support setting the values for JSON-LD keywords. Following methods are defined in the builder interface:

• addJsonLdContext (Adds the [@context] (https://www.w3.org/TR/json-ld/#the-context) with a JsonLdContext. The @base could be set by building a JsonLdContext using JsonLdFactory.newContextBuilder(). Examples can be found in Example Code. More JSON-LD keywords and custom term definition will be supported in future release.)
• setJsonLdId (Sets the [@id] (https://www.w3.org/TR/json-ld/#node-identifiers) with the given string value.)
• setJsonLdReverse (Sets the [@reverse] (https://www.w3.org/TR/json-ld/#reverse-properties) relationship between the current entity and the target entity.)
• The JSON-LD serializer is able to determine appropriate @context url automatically based on serialized objects. So users don’t need to explicitly set the @context URL.

Example Code

Serialization

JsonLdSerializer serializer = new JsonLdSerializer(true /* setPrettyPrinting */);
DataFeed object =
    CoreFactory.newDataFeedBuilder()
        .addJsonLdContext(
            JsonLdFactory.newContextBuilder()
                .setBase("http://example.com/")
                .build())
        .addDataFeedElement(
            CoreFactory.newRecipeBuilder()
                .setJsonLdId("123456")
                .addName("recipe name")
                .addAuthor(CoreFactory.newPersonBuilder().addName("John Smith").build())
                .addIsFamilyFriendly(BooleanEnum.TRUE)
                .setJsonLdReverse(
                    CoreConstants.PROPERTY_RECIPE,
                    CoreFactory.newCookActionBuilder().setJsonLdId("54321").build())
                .build())
        .build();
try {
  String jsonLdStr = serializer.serialize(object);
} catch (JsonLdSyntaxException e) {
  // Errors related to JSON-LD format and schema.org terms in JSON-LD
} catch (JsonIOException e) {
  // Errors related to JSON format
}

Every addXXX() method that takes the immutable class built from the builder class also has an overloaded convenience method that takes the builder class itself as shown below:

JsonLdSerializer serializer = new JsonLdSerializer(true /* setPrettyPrinting */);
DataFeed object =
    CoreFactory.newDataFeedBuilder()
        .addJsonLdContext(
            JsonLdFactory.newContextBuilder()
                .setBase("http://example.com/"))
        .addDataFeedElement(
            CoreFactory.newRecipeBuilder()
                .setJsonLdId("123456")
                .addName("recipe name")
                .addAuthor(CoreFactory.newPersonBuilder().addName("John Smith"))
                .addIsFamilyFriendly(BooleanEnum.TRUE)
                .setJsonLdReverse(
                    CoreConstants.PROPERTY_RECIPE,
                    CoreFactory.newCookActionBuilder().setJsonLdId("54321"))
        .build();
try {
  String jsonLdStr = serializer.serialize(object);
} catch (JsonLdSyntaxException e) {
  // Errors related to JSON-LD format and schema.org terms in JSON-LD
} catch (JsonIOException e) {
  // Errors related to JSON format
}

Multiple schema.org objects can be serialized by calling the overloaded method serialize(List<? extends Thing> objects).

Deserialization

JsonLdSerializer serializer = new JsonLdSerializer(true /* setPrettyPrinting */);
String jsonLd =
    "{\n"
        + "  \"@context\": [\n"
        + "    \"http://schema.org/\",\n"
        + "    {\n"
        + "      \"@base\": \"http://example.com/\"\n"
        + "    }\n"
        + "  ],\n"
        + "  \"@type\": \"DataFeed\",\n"
        + "  \"dataFeedElement\": {\n"
        + "    \"@type\": \"Recipe\",\n"
        + "    \"@id\": \"123456\",\n"
        + "    \"name\": \"recipe name\",\n"
        + "    \"author\": {\n"
        + "      \"@type\": \"Person\",\n"
        + "      \"name\": \"ABC DEF\"\n"
        + "    },\n"
        + "    \"isFamilyFriendly\": \"http://schema.org/True\",\n"
        + "    \"@reverse\": {\n"
        + "      \"recipe\": {\n"
        + "        \"@type\": \"CookAction\",\n"
        + "        \"@id\": \"54321\"\n"
        + "      }\n"
        + "    }\n"
        + "  }\n"
        + "}";
try {
    List<Thing> actual = serializer.deserialize(jsonLd);
    if ("http://schema.org/DataFeed".equals(actual.get(0).getFullTypeName()) {
    DataFeed dataFeed = (DataFeed) actual.get(0);
    List<ValueType> contexts = dataFeed.getJsonLdContextList();
    String url = ((JsonLdContext) contexts.get(0)).getUrl();
    String goog = ((JsonLdContext) contexts.get(1)).getTerm("goog");
    Recipe recipe = (Recipe) (dataFeed.getDataFeedElementList().get(0));
    String id = recipe.getJsonLdId();
    String recipeName = ((Text) recipe.getNameList().get(0)).getValue();
  }
} catch (JsonLdSyntaxException e) {
  // Errors related to JSON-LD format and schema.org terms in JSON-LD
} catch (JsonIOException e) {
  // Errors related to JSON format
}

Limitations of current JSON-LD deserialization are given below:

• Every JSON-LD entity should have a @type. Its value must be a full schema.org type name (e.g. “http://schema.org/Thing") or a short type name (e.g. “Thing”).
• The parser supports only http://schema.org and http://schema.googleapis.com terms. It assumes the context is always “http://schema.org" or “http://schema.googleapis.com". And all relative IRIs are resolved relative to “http://schema.org/" or “http://schema.googleapis.com/".
• The parser doesn’t support [compact IRI] (https://www.w3.org/TR/json-ld/#compact-iris).
• The JSON-LD format does not contain sufficient information to determine the exact subtype of the DataType hierarchy. The parser does not currently understand the [coercion rule] (https://www.w3.org/TR/json-ld/#type-coercion). Therefore, all numerical values are parsed on a best-effort basis to the numerical type that the property accepts. All text values are parsed to be com.google.schemaorg.core.datatype.Text. You should not expect to see other types such as URL, Date, Time, DateTime, etc..

Future versions of this client library may remove these limitations.

Dependencies

This library depends on following public libraries:

• Google Gson
• Google Core Libraries for Java
• JSR 305

To add dependency using Gradle:

• Use remote repository

repositories {
    mavenCentral()
}

dependencies {
    compile 'com.google.code.findbugs:jsr305:3.0.1'
    compile 'com.google.guava:guava:19.0'
    compile 'com.google.code.gson:gson:2.5'
    compile files('schema-org-client-1.0.0/schema-org-client-1.0.0.jar')
}

• Use local files

dependencies {
    compile fileTree(dir: 'schema-org-client-1.0.0/lib', include: '*.jar')
    compile files('schema-org-client-1.0.0/schema-org-client-1.0.0.jar')
}

Links

• schema.org
• JSON-LD