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RDF 1.2 N-Triples
A line-based syntax for an RDF graph
More details about this document
- This version:
- https://www.w3.org/TR/2025/WD-rdf12-n-triples-20250814/
- Latest published version:
- https://www.w3.org/TR/rdf12-n-triples/
- Latest editor's draft:
- https://w3c.github.io/rdf-n-triples/spec/
- History:
- https://www.w3.org/standards/history/rdf12-n-triples/
- Commit history
- Test suite:
- https://w3c.github.io/rdf-tests/rdf/rdf12/rdf-n-triples/
- Latest Recommendation:
- https://www.w3.org/TR/n-triples
- Editors:
- Gregg Kellogg
- Dominik Tomaszuk
- Former editors:
- Gavin Carothers
- Andy Seaborne
- Author:
- David Beckett
- Feedback:
- GitHub w3c/rdf-n-triples (pull requests, new issue, open issues)
- public-rdf-star-wg@w3.org with subject line [rdf12-n-triples] … message topic … (archives)
Copyright © 2008-2025 World Wide Web Consortium. W3C® liability, trademark and permissive document license rules apply.
Abstract
N-Triples is a line-based, plain text format for encoding an RDF graph.
RDF 1.2 N-Triples introduces triple terms as a fourth kind of RDF term which can be used as the object of another triple, making it possible to make statements about other statements. RDF 1.2 N-Triples also adds support for directional language-tagged strings.
Status of This Document
This section describes the status of this document at the time of its publication. A list of current W3C publications and the latest revision of this technical report can be found in the W3C standards and drafts index.
This document is part of the RDF 1.2 document suite. The N-Triples format is a line-based RDF syntax based on a subset of Turtle [RDF12-TURTLE].
This document was published by the RDF & SPARQL Working Group as a Working Draft using the Recommendation track.
Publication as a Working Draft does not imply endorsement by W3C and its Members.
This is a draft document and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to cite this document as other than a work in progress. Future updates to this specification may incorporate new features.
This document was produced by a group operating under the W3C Patent Policy. W3C maintains a public list of any patent disclosures made in connection with the deliverables of the group; that page also includes instructions for disclosing a patent. An individual who has actual knowledge of a patent that the individual believes contains Essential Claim(s) must disclose the information in accordance with section 6 of the W3C Patent Policy.
This document is governed by the 03 November 2023 W3C Process Document.
This document is one of eleven RDF 1.2 and twelve SPARQL 1.2 documents produced by the RDF & SPARQL Working Group.
List of documents
RDF 1.2 Documents:
- What’s New in RDF 1.2
- RDF 1.2 Concepts and Abstract Syntax
- RDF 1.2 N-Quads
- RDF 1.2 N-Triples (this document)
- RDF 1.2 Primer
- RDF 1.2 Schema
- RDF 1.2 Semantics
- RDF 1.2 TriG
- RDF 1.2 Turtle
- RDF 1.2 XML Syntax
- RDF 1.2 Interoperability
SPARQL 1.2 Documents:
- What’s New in SPARQL 1.2
- SPARQL 1.2 Concepts
- SPARQL 1.2 Query Language
- SPARQL 1.2 Update
- SPARQL 1.2 Service Description
- SPARQL 1.2 Federated Query
- SPARQL 1.2 Query Results JSON Format
- SPARQL 1.2 Query Results CSV and TSV Formats
- SPARQL 1.2 Query Results XML Format
- SPARQL 1.2 Entailment Regimes
- SPARQL 1.2 Protocol
- SPARQL 1.2 Graph Store Protocol
This section is non-normative.
This document defines N-Triples, a concrete syntax for RDF [RDF12-CONCEPTS]. N-Triples is an easy to parse line-based subset of Turtle [RDF12-TURTLE].
The syntax is a revised version of N-Triples as originally defined in the RDF Test Cases [RDF-TESTCASES] document. Its original intent was for writing test cases, but it has proven to be popular as an exchange format for RDF data.
An N-Triples document can contain a single kind of parsing directive for announcing the RDF version of the content. See 2.2 Version Announcement.
N-Triples triples are a sequence of RDF terms representing the
subject,
predicate, and
object
of an RDF Triple.
These may be separated by white space (spaces, and/or tabs).
This sequence is terminated by a period (.),
optionally followed by white space and/or a comment,
and a new line (optional at the end of a document).
<https://one.example/subject1> <https://one.example/predicate1> <https://one.example/object1> . # comments here
# or on a line by themselves
_:subject1 <https://an.example/predicate1> "object1" .
_:subject2 <https://an.example/predicate2> "object2" .
N-Triples triples are also Turtle simple triples, but Turtle includes other representations of RDF terms and abbreviations of RDF Triples. When parsed by a Turtle parser, data in the N-Triples format will produce exactly the same triples as a parser for the N-Triples language.
The RDF graph represented by an N-Triples document contains
exactly each triple matching the N-Triples
triple production.
This section is non-normative.
An N-Triples document allows writing down an
RDF graph
in a textual form.
An RDF graph is made up of simple triples
consisting of a
subject,
predicate, and
object
and optional blank lines.
Comments may be given after a # that is not part of
another lexical token and continue to the end of the line.
The simplest triple statement is a sequence of
(subject,
predicate, and
object) terms,
and terminated by a period (.).
White space (spaces U+0020 or tabs U+0009) may surround terms,
except where significant as noted in the grammar.
Comments are treated as white space, and may be given after a #
that is not part of
another lexical token and continue to the end of the line.
<https://example.org/#spiderman> <https://www.perceive.net/schemas/relationship/enemyOf> <https://example.org/#green-goblin> .
The N-Triples language has evolved since its origin, and RDF 1.2
adds new syntax.
RDF 1.2 N-Triples introduces the
VERSION directive
along with an optional version Media Type parameter.
When respectively serializing and parsing N-Triples with new features such as
initial text directions
or triple terms,
authors and parsers can announce and detect the use of the new syntax forms using these directives; similarly,
HTTP clients and servers can use the version Media Type parameter.
RDF 1.2 N-Triples includes a VERSION directive to note that the content may be marked with version 1.2, 1.2-basic, or 1.1. This can also be done via a media type parameter. As N-Triples is otherwise only composed of triples, comments and blank lines, this feature may break expectations, is in contention with the practice of either concatenating together multiple files, or processing subsets of N-Triples independently. As such, the feature may be removed in a future update tho this specification.
In contrast to Turtle, the version declaration is case-sensitive.
VERSION "1.2"
<https://example.org/#spiderman> <https://www.perceive.net/schemas/relationship/enemyOf> <https://example.org/#green-goblin> .
When transferring content over HTTP, senders and receivers can announce or request the version
using the optional version Media Type parameter:
GET /document.nt HTTP/1.1
Host: example.com
Accept: application/n-triples; version=1.2
See Version Announcement in [RDF12-TURTLE] for more considerations on using the version declaration.
A triple term may be the object of an RDF triple.
A triple term
is represented as a tripleTerm with
subject,
predicate, and
object
preceded by <<(, and
followed by )>>.
Note that triple terms
may be nested.
VERSION "1.2"
_:e38 <ex:familyName> "Smith" .
_:anno <https://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#reifies> <<( _:e38 <https://example.com/jobTitle> "Designer" )>> .
_:anno <https://example.com/accordingTo> _:e22 .
IRIs may be written only as resolved IRIs.
IRIs are preceded by < and
followed by >,
and may contain numeric escape sequences (described below).
For example <https://example.org/#green-goblin>.
Literals are used to identify values such as strings, numbers, dates.
Literals (Grammar production Literal)
have a lexical form followed by either a
language tag
(possibly including an initial text direction),
a datatype IRI,
or neither.
The representation of the lexical form consists of an
initial delimiter ",
a sequence of permitted characters or
numeric escape sequences or
string escape sequences,
and a final delimiter.
Literals may not contain the characters ",
LF, or
CR
except in their escaped forms.
In addition \
may not appear in any quoted literal except as part of an escape sequence
and a " character
can only be included in a quoted literal using an escape sequence.
The corresponding lexical form
is the characters between the delimiters, after processing any escape sequences.
If present, the LANG_DIR
terminal matches the language tag
and optionally the initial text direction.
The language tag
is preceded by an @,
and, if present, the initial text direction
is separated from the language tag
by --.
If there is no language tag, there may be a datatype IRI,
preceded by ^^.
If there is no datatype IRI and no language tag, then
it is a simple literal
and the datatype is https://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string.
VERSION "1.2"
<https://example.org/show/218> <https://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#label> "That Seventies Show"^^<https://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string> . # literal with XML Schema string datatype
<https://example.org/show/218> <https://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#label> "That Seventies Show" . # same as above
<https://example.org/show/218> <https://example.org/show/localName> "That Seventies Show"@en . # literal with a language tag
<https://example.org/show/218> <https://example.org/show/localName> "That Seventies Show"@en-ltr . # literal with a language tag and an initial text direction
<https://example.org/show/218> <https://example.org/show/localName> "Cette Série des Années Septante"@fr-be . # literal outside of ASCII range with a region subtag
<https://example.org/#spiderman> <https://example.org/text> "This is a multi-line literal with many quotation marks (""""") and two apostrophes ('')." .
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium> <https://example.org/elements/atomicNumber> "2"^^<https://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#integer> . # xsd:integer
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium> <https://example.org/elements/specificGravity> "1.663E-4"^^<https://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#double> . # xsd:double
RDF blank nodes are expressed as _:
followed by a blank node label which is a series of name characters.
The characters in the label are built upon PN_CHARS_BASE,
liberalized as follows:
- The characters
_and the digit characters0–9may appear anywhere in a blank node label. - The character
.may appear anywhere except the first or last character. - The characters
-,·,‿,⁀, and the combining diacritical marks (U+0300toU+036F) are permitted anywhere except the first character.
A fresh RDF blank node is allocated for each unique blank node identifier in a document. Repeated use of the same blank node identifier identifies the same blank node.
_:alice <https://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/knows> _:bob .
_:bob <https://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/knows> _:alice .
This section defines a canonical form of N-Triples which has a completely specified layout. The grammar for the language is unchanged.
While the N-Triples syntax allows choices for the representation and layout of RDF data,
the canonical form of N-Triples provides a unique syntactic representation of any triple.
Each code point
can be represented by only one of
UCHAR,
ECHAR,
or unencoded character,
where the relevant production allows for a choice in representation.
Each triple is represented entirely on a single line with specified white space.
Canonical N-Triples has the following additional constraints on layout:
-
White space MUST NOT be used except after
subject,predicate,object, and the terminal<<(, any of which MUST be a singlespace. - A Canonical N-Triples document MUST NOT include a
VERSIONdirective. -
Literals with the
datatype
https://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#stringMUST NOT use the datatype IRI part of theliteral, and are represented using onlySTRING_LITERAL_QUOTE. -
HEXMUST use only digits ([0–9]) and uppercase letters ([A–F]). -
Alphabetic characters in
LANG_DIRMUST use only the lowercase letters ([a–z]) with any uppercase letters case mapped to lowercase. - Within
STRING_LITERAL_QUOTE:-
Characters
BS,HT,LF,FF,CR,", and\MUST be encoded usingECHAR. -
Characters in the range from
U+0000toU+0007,VT, characters in the range fromU+000EtoU+001F,DEL, and characters not matching the Char production from [XML11] MUST be represented byUCHARusing a lowercase\uwith 4HEXes. -
All characters not required to be represented by
ECHARorUCHARMUST be represented by their native [UNICODE] representation.
-
Characters
- The token
EOLMUST be a singleLF. - The final
EOLMUST be provided.
As well as sections marked as non-normative, all authoring guidelines, diagrams, examples, and notes in this specification are non-normative. Everything else in this specification is normative.
The key words MAY, MUST, MUST NOT, and SHOULD in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here.
This specification defines conformance criteria for:
A conforming N-Triples document is an RDF string
that conforms to the grammar and additional constraints defined in 5. N-Triples Grammar,
starting with the ntriplesDoc production.
An N-Triples document serializes an RDF graph.
A conforming Canonical N-Triples document is an N-Triples document that follows the additional constraints of Canonical N-Triples.
A conforming N-Triples parser is a system capable of reading N-Triples documents on behalf of an application. It makes the serialized RDF graph, as defined in 6. Parsing, available to the application, usually through some form of API.
The IRI that identifies the N-Triples language is: https://www.w3.org/ns/formats/N-Triples
The media type of N-Triples is application/n-triples.
The content encoding of N-Triples is always UTF-8 [RFC3629].
See N-Triples Media Type for the media type
registration form.
N-Triples has been historically provided with other media types.
N-Triples may also be provided as text/plain.
When used in this way N-Triples MUST use the escaped form of any character outside US-ASCII.
As N-Triples is a subset of Turtle an N-Triples document MAY also be provided as text/turtle.
In both of these cases the document is not an N-Triples document as an N-Triples document is only provided as application/n-triples.
An N-Triples document is an RDF string encoded in UTF-8 [RFC3629].
Only Unicode scalar values,
in the ranges U+0000 to U+D7FF
and U+E000 to U+10FFFF,
are allowed. This excludes
surrogate code points,
range U+D800 to U+DFFF.
White space (spaces, and/or tabs) is allowed outside of terminals.
Rule names below in capitals indicate where white space is significant.
White space is significant in the production STRING_LITERAL_QUOTE.
A blank line, consisting of only white space and/or a comment,
may appear wherever a triple production is allowed,
and are treated as white space.
N-Triples allows only horizontal white space (spaces or tabs)
as compared to Turtle [RDF12-TURTLE] which also treats
LFs
and CRs
as white space.
Comments in N-Triples start at #
outside an IRIREF or STRING_LITERAL_QUOTE,
and continue to the end of line
— marked by character
CR or
LF —
or to the end of file, if there is no end of line after the comment marker.
Comments are treated as white space.
The EBNF used here is defined in XML 1.0 [EBNF-NOTATION].
Escape sequence rules are the same as Turtle [RDF12-TURTLE].
However, as only the STRING_LITERAL_QUOTE
production is allowed new lines in literals MUST be escaped.
The 'VERSION' terminal is in single quotes
to indicate that it is case-sensitive.
RDF 1.2 N-Triples includes a VERSION directive to note that the content may be marked with version 1.2, 1.2-basic, or 1.1. This can also be done via a media type parameter. As N-Triples is otherwise only composed of triples, comments and blank lines, this feature may break expectations, is in contention with the practice of either concatenating together multiple files, or processing subsets of N-Triples independently. As such, the feature may be removed in a future update tho this specification.
| [1] | ntriplesDoc |
::= | statement? (EOL statement)* EOL? |
| [2] | statement |
::= | directive | (triple '.') |
| [3] | directive |
::= | versionDirective |
| [4] | versionDirective |
::= | 'VERSION' versionSpecifier |
| [5] | versionSpecifier |
::= | STRING_LITERAL_QUOTE |
| [6] | triple |
::= | subject predicate object '.' |
| [7] | subject |
::= | IRIREF | BLANK_NODE_LABEL |
| [8] | predicate |
::= | IRIREF |
| [9] | object |
::= | IRIREF | BLANK_NODE_LABEL | literal | tripleTerm |
| [10] | literal |
::= | STRING_LITERAL_QUOTE (('^^' IRIREF) | LANG_DIR)? |
| [11] | tripleTerm |
::= | '<<(' subject predicate object ')>>' |
| [13] | IRIREF |
::= | '<' ([^#x00-#x20<>"{}|^`\] | UCHAR)* '>' |
| [14] | BLANK_NODE_LABEL |
::= | '_:' (PN_CHARS_U | [0-9]) ((PN_CHARS | '.')* PN_CHARS)? |
| [15] | LANG_DIR |
::= | '@' [a-zA-Z]+ ('-' [a-zA-Z0-9]+)* ('--' [a-zA-Z]+)? |
| [16] | STRING_LITERAL_QUOTE |
::= | '"' ([^#x22#x5C#x0A#x0D] | ECHAR | UCHAR)* '"' |
| [17] | UCHAR |
::= | ('\u' HEX HEX HEX HEX) | ('\U' HEX HEX HEX HEX HEX HEX HEX HEX) |
| [18] | ECHAR |
::= | '\' [tbnrf\"'] |
| [19] | PN_CHARS_BASE |
::= | [A-Z] |
| |
[a-z] |
||
| |
[#xC0-#xD6] |
||
| |
[#xD8-#xF6] |
||
| |
[#xF8-#x02FF] |
||
| |
[#x0370-#x037D] |
||
| |
[#x037F-#x1FFF] |
||
| |
[#x200C-#x200D] |
||
| |
[#x2070-#x218F] |
||
| |
[#x2C00-#x2FEF] |
||
| |
[#x3001-#xD7FF] |
||
| |
[#xF900-#xFDCF] |
||
| |
[#xFDF0-#xFFFD] |
||
| |
[#x00010000-#x000EFFFF] |
||
| [20] | PN_CHARS_U |
::= | PN_CHARS_BASE | '_' |
| [21] | PN_CHARS |
::= | PN_CHARS_U | '-' | [0-9] | #xB7 | [#x0300-#x036F] | [#x203F-#x2040] |
| [22] | HEX |
::= | [0-9] | [A-F] | [a-f] |
| [23] | EOL |
::= | [#x0D#x0A]+ |
A text version of this grammar is available here.
This document uses some specific terminal literal strings [EBNF-NOTATION]. To clarify the Unicode code points used for these terminal literal strings, the following table describes specific characters and sequences used throughout this document.
| Code | Glyph | Description |
|---|---|---|
U+0008 |
BS |
Backspace |
U+0009 |
HT |
Horizontal tab |
U+000A |
LF |
Line feed |
U+000B |
VT |
Vertical tab |
U+000C |
FF |
Form feed |
U+000D |
CR |
Carriage return |
U+0022 |
" |
Quotation mark |
U+0023 |
# |
Number sign |
U+002D |
- |
Hyphen |
U+002E |
. |
Full stop |
U+0030 |
0 |
Digit zero |
U+0039 |
9 |
Digit nine |
U+003B |
: |
Colon |
U+003C |
< |
Less-than sign |
U+003E |
> |
Greater-than sign |
U+0040 |
@ |
At sign |
U+0041 |
A |
Latin capital letter A |
U+0046 |
F |
Latin capital letter F |
U+005C |
\ |
Backslash |
U+005F |
_ |
Underscore |
U+0061 |
a |
Latin small letter A |
U+007A |
F |
Latin small letter Z |
U+007F |
DEL |
Delete |
U+00B7 |
· |
Middle dot |
U+203F |
‿ |
Undertie |
U+2040 |
⁀ |
Character tie |
Other short terminal literal strings are composed of specific sequences of Unicode characters:
spaceU+0020<<(- two concatenated less-than sign characters, each having the code point
U+003C, followed by a left parenthesis character, having the code pointU+0028 )>>- a left parenthesis character, having the code point
U+0029followed by two concatenated greater-than sign characters, each having the code pointU+003E ^^- two concatenated circumflex accent characters, each having the code point
U+005E _:_followed by:--- two concatenated
-characters
Parsing N-Triples requires a state of two items:
- Map[string -> blank node]
bnodeLabels— A mapping from string to blank node. xsd:stringcurVersion – The RDF version used for parsing the document into Triples. If specified as part of a Media Type, the default value for curVersion is taken from theversionparameter. Acceptable values forversionare defined in 2.1 Version Lables in [RDF12-CONCEPTS]. The version announcement is only a hint; this specification does not mandate any parser behavior based on curVersion, but a parser MAY signal an error or a warning when it encounters a feature that does not match the value of curVersion.
This table maps productions and lexical tokens to RDF terms or components of RDF terms listed in 6. Parsing:
| production | type | procedure |
|---|---|---|
| versionSpecifier | literal | The curVersion is taken from a literal
using the matched RDF string
lexical form and xsd:string datatype.
|
| BLANK_NODE_LABEL | blank node |
The string after _:,
is a key in bnodeLabels.
If there is no corresponding blank node in the map,
one is allocated.
|
| IRIREF | IRI |
The characters between <
and > are taken,
with escape sequences unescaped,
to form the IRI.
The resulting IRI MUST comply with the
syntactic restrictions of generic IRI syntax,
and SHOULD conform to section 3.3 of [RFC3986]
and comply with any narrower restrictions imposed by the corresponding IRI scheme specification.
|
| LANG_DIR | language tag |
The characters following the @
form the language tag
and optionally the initial text direction,
if the matched characters include
--.
The language tag
MUST be well-formed according to
section 2.2.9
of [BCP47].
If present, the initial text direction
MUST be either ltr or rtl.
|
| STRING_LITERAL_QUOTE | lexical form |
The characters between the outermost quotation marks (") are taken,
with escape sequences unescaped,
to form the string of a lexical form.
|
| literal | literal |
The literal has a lexical form of the first rule argument,
STRING_LITERAL_QUOTE,
and either a language tag
with optional initial text direction
from LANG_DIR
or a datatype IRI of iri,
depending on which rule matched the input.
If the LANG_DIR rule matched,
the language tag
and initial text direction
are taken from LANG_DIR.
If there is no initial text direction,
the datatype is rdf:langString.
If there is an initial text direction,
the datatype is rdf:dirLangString.
If neither LANG_DIR
nor datatype IRI match,
the literal has a datatype of xsd:string.
|
| tripleTerm | triple term |
The triple term
is composed of the terms constructed from
the subject,
predicate, and
object productions.
|
As processors which detect errors on input can result in graphs which contain fewer triples than are described in the input (including no triples whatsoever), consumers should consider information of any errors signaled when using the resulting graph, which may be incomplete and/or include ill-typed or ill-formed terms.
An N-Triples document defines an RDF graphs
composed of a set of RDF Triples.
The triple production
produces a triple defined by the terms constructed for
subject,
predicate, and
object.
This section is non-normative.
The N-Triples format is used to express arbitrary application data, which may include the expression of personally identifiable information (PII) or other information which could be considered sensitive. Authors publishing such information are advised to carefully consider the needs and use of publishing such information, as well as the applicable regulations for the regions where the data is expected to be consumed and potentially revealed (e.g., GDPR, CCPA, others), particularly whether authorization measures are needed for access to the data.
This section is non-normative.
The STRING_LITERAL_QUOTE
production allows the use of unescaped control characters.
Although this specification does not directly expose this content to an end user,
it might be presented through a user agent, which may cause the presented text to
be obfuscated due to presentation of such characters.
N-Triples is a general-purpose assertion language; applications may evaluate given data to infer more assertions or to dereference IRIs, invoking the security considerations of the scheme for that IRI. Note in particular, the privacy issues in [RFC3023] section 10 for HTTP IRIs. Data obtained from an inaccurate or malicious data source may lead to inaccurate or misleading conclusions, as well as the dereferencing of unintended IRIs. Care must be taken to align the trust in consulted resources with the sensitivity of the intended use of the data; inferences of potential medical treatments would likely require different trust than inferences for trip planning.
The N-Triples language is used to express arbitrary application data; security considerations will vary by domain of use. Security tools and protocols applicable to text (for example, PGP encryption, checksum validation, password-protected compression) may also be used on N-Triples documents. Security/privacy protocols must be imposed which reflect the sensitivity of the embedded information.
N-Triples can express data which is presented to the user, such as RDF Schema labels. Applications rendering strings retrieved from untrusted N-Triples documents, or using unescaped characters, SHOULD use warnings and other appropriate means to limit the possibility that malignant strings might be used to mislead the reader. The security considerations in the media type registration for XML ([RFC3023] section 10) provide additional guidance around the expression of arbitrary data and markup.
N-Triples uses IRIs as term identifiers. Applications interpreting data expressed in N-Triples SHOULD address the security issues of Internationalized Resource Identifiers (IRIs) [RFC3987] Section 8, as well as Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax [RFC3986] Section 7.
Multiple IRIs may have the same appearance. Characters in different scripts may look similar (for instance, a Cyrillic "о" may appear similar to a Latin "o"). A character followed by combining characters may have the same visual representation as another character (for example, LATIN SMALL LETTER "E" followed by COMBINING ACUTE ACCENT has the same visual representation as LATIN SMALL LETTER "E" WITH ACUTE). Any person or application that is writing or interpreting data in N-Triples must take care to use the IRI that matches the intended semantics, and avoid IRIs that may look similar. Further information about matching visually similar characters can be found in Unicode Security Considerations [UNICODE-SECURITY] and Internationalized Resource Identifiers (IRIs) [RFC3987] Section 8.
The Internet Media Type (formerly known as MIME Type) for N-Triples is "application/n-triples".
The information that follows has been submitted to the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) for review, approval, and registration with IANA.
- Type name:
- application
- Subtype name:
- n-triples
- Required parameters:
- None
- Optional parameters:
version— this parameter is optional but SHOULD be present when using RDF 1.2-specific features. If present, acceptable values ofversionare defined in 2.1 Version Lables in [RDF12-CONCEPTS].- Encoding considerations:
- The syntax of N-Triples is expressed over code points in Unicode [UNICODE]. The encoding is always UTF-8 [UTF-8].
- Unicode code points may also be expressed using an \uXXXX (U+0 to U+FFFF) or \UXXXXXXXX syntax (for U+10000 onwards) where X is a hexadecimal digit [0-9A-F]
- Security considerations:
- See B. Security Considerations.
- Interoperability considerations:
- There are no known interoperability issues.
- Published specification:
- This specification.
- Applications which use this media type:
- N-Triples is used widely for representing RDF data. There are implementations available in most common programming languages.
- Additional information:
-
- Magic number(s):
- None.
- File extension(s):
- .nt;
- Macintosh file type code(s):
- TEXT
- Person & email address to contact for further information:
- RDF & SPARQL Working Group <public-rdf-star-wg@w3.org>
- Intended usage:
- Common
- Restrictions on usage:
- None
- Author(s):
- The N-Triples specification is the product of the RDF & SPARQL WG. The W3C reserves change control over this specifications.
This section is non-normative.
This section is non-normative.
The editor of the RDF 1.1 edition acknowledges valuable contributions from Gregg Kellogg, Eric Prud'hommeaux, Dave Beckett, David Robillard, Gregory Williams, Pat Hayes, Richard Cyganiak, Henry S. Thompson, Peter Ansell, Evan Patton and David Booth.
This specification is a product of extended deliberations by the members of the RDF Working Group. It draws upon the earlier specification in [RDF-TESTCASES], edited by Dave Beckett.
This section is non-normative.
The editors of the RDF 1.2 edition acknowledge valuable contributions from Andy Seaborne.
In addition to the editors, the following people have contributed to this specification: Denis Ah-Kang, Gregory Todd Williams, Peter F. Patel-Schneider, Pierre-Antoine Champin, and Ted Thibodeau Jr
Members of the RDF & SPARQL Working Group Group included Vladimir Alexiev, James Anderson, Amin Anjomshoaa, Julián Arenas-Guerrero, Dörthe Arndt, Bilal Ben Mahria, Erich Bremer, Dan Brickley, Kurt Cagle, Sarven Capadisli, Rémi Ceres, Pierre-Antoine Champin, David Chaves-Fraga, Souripriya Das, Daniil Dobriy, Enrico Franconi, Jeffrey Phillips Freeman, Fabien Gandon, Benjamin Goering, Damien Graux, Adrian Gschwend, Olaf Hartig, Timothée Haudebourg, Ian Horrocks, Gregg Kellogg, Mark Kim, Jose Emilio Labra Gayo, Ora Lassila, Richard Lea, Niklas Lindström, Pasquale Lisena, Thomas Lörtsch, Matthew Nguyen, Peter Patel-Schneider, Thomas Pellissier Tanon, Dave Raggett, Jean-Yves ROSSI, Felix Sasaki, Andy Seaborne, Alan Snyder, Stuart Sutton, Ruben Taelman, Ted Thibodeau Jr, Dominik Tomaszuk, Raphaël Troncy, William Van Woensel, Gregory Williams, Jesse Wright, Achille Zappa, and Antoine Zimmermann.
Recognize members of the Task Force? Not an easy to find list of contributors.
This section is non-normative.
- Better align the use of white space and comments with [RDF12-TURTLE].
- Removed language about white space use between terminals that would otherwise be (mis-)recognized, is this can't happen in N-Triples.
- Clarify the use of blank lines, including those composed of white space and/or comments. Comments can appear at the end of a triple before the newline as was already evident from Example 1.
- Create separate subsections of 5. N-Triples Grammar for White space and Comments, better mirroring [RDF12-TURTLE].
- Updated the
PN_CHARS_Ugrammar production to be consisten with with Turtle. - Adds support for triple terms as described in 2.3 Triple Terms with updates to 6.1 RDF Term Constructors.
- Separated B. Security Considerations from C. Internet Media Type, File Extension and Macintosh File Type and updated language.
- Changes the
LANGTAGterminal production toLANG_DIRto include an optional initial text direction. - Changes 3. A Canonical form of N-Triples to clarify
use of datatype IRIs and expand the use of escapes
in literals
and to require that the characters in
LANG_DIRbe in lowercase. - Clarify that Unicode surrogates are not legal in N-Triples documents, nor as the value of a Unicode escape sequence.
- Added 2.2 Version Announcement and parser state and productions to announce the RDF version associated with the input document. Note that this feature is at risk.
This section is non-normative.
- blank line §5.1
- Canonical N-Triples document §4.
- N-Triples document §4.
- N-Triples parser §4.
-
[BCP47] defines the following:
- section 2.2.9
-
[I18N-GLOSSARY] defines the following:
- case mapped
- surrogate code points
- Unicode scalar values
-
[RDF12-CONCEPTS] defines the following:
- 2.1 Version Lables
- blank node identifier
- datatype IRI
- directional language-tagged strings
- ill-typed
- initial text directions
- IRIs
- language tag
- lexical form
- Literals
- object type
- predicate
- RDF blank nodes
- RDF graph
- RDF string
- RDF term
- simple literal
- subject
- triple
- triple terms
-
[RDF12-TURTLE] defines the following:
- abbreviations of RDF Triples
- numeric escape sequences
- string escape sequences
- Version Announcement
-
[RFC3986] defines the following:
- resolved
- section 3.3
-
[RFC3987] defines the following:
- syntactic restrictions
-
[XML11] defines the following:
- Char
This section is non-normative.
- [BCP47]
- Tags for Identifying Languages. A. Phillips, Ed.; M. Davis, Ed. IETF. September 2009. Best Current Practice. URL: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5646
- [EBNF-NOTATION]
- EBNF Notation. Tim Bray; Jean Paoli; Michael Sperberg-McQueen; Eve Maler; François Yergeau et al. W3C. W3C Recommendation. URL: https://www.w3.org/TR/xml/#sec-notation
- [I18N-GLOSSARY]
- Internationalization Glossary. Richard Ishida; Addison Phillips. W3C. 17 October 2024. W3C Working Group Note. URL: https://www.w3.org/TR/i18n-glossary/
- [RDF12-CONCEPTS]
- RDF 1.2 Concepts and Abstract Syntax. Olaf Hartig; Pierre-Antoine Champin; Gregg Kellogg; Andy Seaborne. W3C. 7 August 2025. W3C Working Draft. URL: https://www.w3.org/TR/rdf12-concepts/
- [RDF12-TURTLE]
- RDF 1.2 Turtle. Gregg Kellogg; Dominik Tomaszuk. W3C. 12 August 2025. W3C Working Draft. URL: https://www.w3.org/TR/rdf12-turtle/
- [RFC2119]
- Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels. S. Bradner. IETF. March 1997. Best Current Practice. URL: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2119
- [RFC3629]
- UTF-8, a transformation format of ISO 10646. F. Yergeau. IETF. November 2003. Internet Standard. URL: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3629
- [RFC3986]
- Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax. T. Berners-Lee; R. Fielding; L. Masinter. IETF. January 2005. Internet Standard. URL: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3986
- [RFC3987]
- Internationalized Resource Identifiers (IRIs). M. Duerst; M. Suignard. IETF. January 2005. Proposed Standard. URL: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3987
- [RFC8174]
- Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC 2119 Key Words. B. Leiba. IETF. May 2017. Best Current Practice. URL: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8174
- [UNICODE]
- The Unicode Standard. Unicode Consortium. URL: https://www.unicode.org/versions/latest/
- [XML11]
- Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.1 (Second Edition). Tim Bray; Jean Paoli; Michael Sperberg-McQueen; Eve Maler; François Yergeau; John Cowan et al. W3C. 16 August 2006. W3C Recommendation. URL: https://www.w3.org/TR/xml11/
- [RDF-TESTCASES]
- RDF Test Cases. jan grant; Dave Beckett. W3C. 10 February 2004. W3C Recommendation. URL: https://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-testcases/
- [RDF12-INTEROP]
- RDF 1.2 Interoperability. Pierre-Antoine Champin. W3C. W3C Editor's Draft. URL: https://w3c.github.io/rdf-interop/spec/
- [RDF12-N-QUADS]
- RDF 1.2 N-Quads. Gregg Kellogg; Dominik Tomaszuk. W3C. 10 July 2025. W3C Working Draft. URL: https://www.w3.org/TR/rdf12-n-quads/
- [RDF12-NEW]
- What’s New in RDF 1.2. The W3C RDF & SPARQL Working Group. W3C. W3C Editor's Draft. URL: https://w3c.github.io/rdf-new/spec/
- [RDF12-PRIMER]
- RDF 1.2 Primer. Niklas Lindström; Pierre-Antoine Champin. W3C. 3 April 2025. DNOTE. URL: https://www.w3.org/TR/rdf12-primer/
- [RDF12-SCHEMA]
- RDF 1.2 Schema. Dominik Tomaszuk; Timothée Haudebourg. W3C. 11 August 2025. W3C Working Draft. URL: https://www.w3.org/TR/rdf12-schema/
- [RDF12-SEMANTICS]
- RDF 1.2 Semantics. Peter Patel-Schneider; Dörthe Arndt; Enrico Franconi. W3C. 14 August 2025. W3C Working Draft. URL: https://www.w3.org/TR/rdf12-semantics/
- [RDF12-TRIG]
- RDF 1.2 TriG. Gregg Kellogg; Dominik Tomaszuk. W3C. 18 June 2025. W3C Working Draft. URL: https://www.w3.org/TR/rdf12-trig/
- [RDF12-XML]
- RDF 1.2 XML Syntax. Gregg Kellogg. W3C. 13 August 2025. W3C Working Draft. URL: https://www.w3.org/TR/rdf12-xml/
- [RFC3023]
- XML Media Types. M. Murata; S. St. Laurent; D. Kohn. IETF. January 2001. Proposed Standard. URL: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3023
- [SPARQL12-CONCEPTS]
- SPARQL 1.2 Concepts. The W3C RDF & SPARQL Working Group. W3C. W3C Editor's Draft. URL: https://w3c.github.io/sparql-concepts/spec/
- [SPARQL12-ENTAILMENT]
- SPARQL 1.2 Entailment Regimes. Peter Patel-Schneider. W3C. 19 December 2024. W3C Working Draft. URL: https://www.w3.org/TR/sparql12-entailment/
- [SPARQL12-FEDERATED-QUERY]
- SPARQL 1.2 Federated Query. Ruben Taelman; Gregory Williams. W3C. 5 May 2025. W3C Working Draft. URL: https://www.w3.org/TR/sparql12-federated-query/
- [SPARQL12-GRAPH-STORE-PROTOCOL]
- SPARQL 1.2 Graph Store Protocol. Andy Seaborne; Thomas Pellissier Tanon. W3C. 19 December 2024. W3C Working Draft. URL: https://www.w3.org/TR/sparql12-graph-store-protocol/
- [SPARQL12-NEW]
- What’s New in SPARQL 1.2. The W3C RDF & SPARQL Working Group. W3C. W3C Editor's Draft. URL: https://w3c.github.io/sparql-new/spec/
- [SPARQL12-PROTOCOL]
- SPARQL 1.2 Protocol. Andy Seaborne; Ruben Taelman; Gregory Williams; Thomas Pellissier Tanon. W3C. 24 June 2025. W3C Working Draft. URL: https://www.w3.org/TR/sparql12-protocol/
- [SPARQL12-QUERY]
- SPARQL 1.2 Query Language. Olaf Hartig; Andy Seaborne; Ruben Taelman; Gregory Williams; Thomas Pellissier Tanon. W3C. 14 August 2025. W3C Working Draft. URL: https://www.w3.org/TR/sparql12-query/
- [SPARQL12-RESULTS-CSV-TSV]
- SPARQL 1.2 Query Results CSV and TSV Formats. Ruben Taelman; Gregory Williams; Thomas Pellissier Tanon. W3C. 19 December 2024. W3C Working Draft. URL: https://www.w3.org/TR/sparql12-results-csv-tsv/
- [SPARQL12-RESULTS-JSON]
- SPARQL 1.2 Query Results JSON Format. Andy Seaborne; Ruben Taelman; Gregory Williams; Thomas Pellissier Tanon. W3C. 8 May 2025. W3C Working Draft. URL: https://www.w3.org/TR/sparql12-results-json/
- [SPARQL12-RESULTS-XML]
- SPARQL 1.2 Query Results XML Format. Ruben Taelman; Dominik Tomaszuk; Thomas Pellissier Tanon. W3C. 27 December 2024. W3C Working Draft. URL: https://www.w3.org/TR/sparql12-results-xml/
- [SPARQL12-SERVICE-DESCRIPTION]
- SPARQL 1.2 Service Description. Ruben Taelman; Gregory Williams. W3C. 19 December 2024. W3C Working Draft. URL: https://www.w3.org/TR/sparql12-service-description/
- [SPARQL12-UPDATE]
- SPARQL 1.2 Update. Ruben Taelman; Andy Seaborne; Thomas Pellissier Tanon. W3C. 14 August 2025. W3C Working Draft. URL: https://www.w3.org/TR/sparql12-update/
- [UNICODE-SECURITY]
- Unicode Security Considerations. Mark Davis; Michel Suignard. Unicode Consortium. 19 September 2014. Unicode Technical Report #36. URL: https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr36/tr36-15.html
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