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character-encodingsparqliri

Escaping quotes in SPARQL

How do I escape quotes in this SPARQL query?

SELECT * WHERE { <http://dbpedia.org/resource/Andre_\"Dede\"_Sabino> rdfs:label ?lbl . ?sub a foaf:Person . ?sub rdfs:label ?lbl . optional {?sub dbo:birthDate ?birthDate .} optional {?sub dbo:birthPlace ?birthPlace . ?birthPlace a dbo:Location } optional {?sub dbo:birthPlace ?birthPlace2 .} ?sub dbo:abstract ?abstract . filter(langMatches(lang(?lbl), "en")) filter(langMatches(lang(?abstract ), "en")) } LIMIT 10

I have tried "" and \" and '.

Solution

  • The quote character (") is not allowed in IRIs (in general, not just specifically in SPARQL). It has to be percent-encoded as %22.

    So the IRI would not be

    http://dbpedia.org/resource/Andre_"Dede"_Sabino

    but

    http://dbpedia.org/resource/Andre_%22Dede%22_Sabino

    (Browsers typically display the unencoded form of the IRI in the address bar, but when copy-pasting it, you should get the percent-encoded form.)

    If you need a quote character inside a string value in SPARQL, you can encode it with a backslash:

    ?person schema:name "Andre \"Dede\" Sabino" .