Syntax Guide

Learn how to compose queries that are based on and conform to Bosch Semantic Stack RQL.

Attribute names

An API that supports Bosch Semantic Stack RQL and can be queried by it, needs the attribute names (aka field names) of its entities (aka resources) to follow a certain syntax.

Attribute names that get used in select, filter, and sort statements are restricted to the following characters:

[a-zA-Z_][a-zA-Z0-9._]*

Attributes can be nested by separating them using a dot . as nesting separator.

The following table details some attribute name examples.

Table 1. Examples
Example attribute name Description

name

A simple attribute named 'name'.

id

A simple attribute named 'id'.

location42_v_2

A simple attribute name containing underscores and numbers.

_someStrangeThing

Attribute names may start with an underscore (but why would you?).

99NotValid

Invalid: attribute names must not start with numbers.

address.street

A nested attribute: the 'street' child attribute is nested in the 'address' parent attribute.

.alsoNotValid

Invalid: attributes must not start with the nesting separator.

mightBeParsedButHasNoMeaning.

Meaningless: the parser reads this but no action will follow as after the nesting separator no attribute is specified.

Main operators

With Bosch Semantic Stack RQL, a query can use up to three operators:

  • select

  • filter

  • option

The following example represents the general form of a Bosch Semantic Stack RQL query string.

select=id,name&filter=ge(id,4711)&option=sort(+name,-description),limit(10,5)

The above query string means:

select

Select the attributes id and name.

filter

Filter for id attribute values that are greater than or equal to 4711.

option

Sort the results ascending by name and descending by description. — Note that the attributes used for sorting (e.g., description) do not have to appear in the select operator.
Limit the returned results to 5 results, starting at result no. 10. — Note that the start of indices depends on a service’s implementation as some databases or library’s start counting at page 0 and some at page 1.

Select operator

The select operator trims an API response down to only a given set of attributes. That means, the data of any further attributes of an entity will not be included in the API response.

The general form of the select operator string looks as follows:

select=attribute1,attribute2,attributeN

User-defined select can be requested via RQL for a root entity. The attributes names are separated by a comma. All child entities will then not be loaded. This means that response times can be significantly improved if only the requested information is returned.

Example: Load (select) only IDs and name (select) and do that only for the root entity.

select=id,name

Filter operator

The filter operator trims an API response down to match only a given set of filter criteria. That means, data not matched by the filter criteria will not be included in the API response.

The general form of the filter operator string looks as follows:

filter={<filter expression>}

The value of the filter operator is a filter expression that uses one of the following operators:

  • Comparison: eq, in, ne, gt, ge, lt, le, like, likeIgnoreCase

  • Logical: and, or, not

Example:

filter=and(like(hobbies.description,"?iking*"),eq(hobbies.name,"ships"))

A query containing the filter expression above would return results (e.g., entities that resemble persons) having a hobby with the name "ships" and where that hobby’s description contains "?iking*". That means, results could be "biking", "viking", "vikings", "vikingships", etc.

The following sections detail the operators that come with Bosch Semantic Stack RQL.

Comparison operators

Bosch Semantic Stack RQL supports the following comparison operators for usage with the filter operator.

Note: A count() operator to count all entities in an API response to the query is not yet implemented.

eq, ne

Data types:
For the provided <value>, these operators accept all literals, i.e., every common data type, including times, Boolean, null, etc.

Table 2. Comparison operators
Operator expression Description

eq(<attribute>,<value>)

Filters for entities where the value of the specified attribute equals the provided value.

ne(<attribute>,<value>)

Filters for entities where the value of the specified attribute is not equal to the provided value.

ge, le, gt, lt

Data types:
For the provided <value>, these operators accept no Boolean or null.

Table 3. Comparison operators
Operator expression Description

ge(<attribute>,<value>)

Filters for entities where the value of the specified attribute is greater than or equal to the provided value.

le(<attribute>,<value>)

Filters for entities where the value of the specified attribute is less than or equal to the provided value.

gt(<attribute>,<value>)

Filters for entities where the value of the specified attribute is greater than the provided value.

lt(<attribute>,<value>)

Filters for entities where the value of the specified attribute is less than the provided value.

in

Data types:
For the provided <array-of-values>, this operator accepts only pure lists, i.e., only floats, only strings, or only integers. It does not support null as a literal.

Table 4. Comparison operators
Operator expression Description

in(<attribute>,<array-of-values>)

Filters for entities where the value of the specified attribute is present in the provided array.

Example:

in(twinCategory,"Machine","Device")

Returns all entities that have an attribute named "twinCategory" containing values of either "Machine" or "Device".

like, likeIgnoreCase

Data type:
For the provided <value>, these operators accept only strings.

Additionally, they also support wildcards:

  • Use ? for a single undefined character.

  • Use * for any number of undefined characters.

Table 5. Comparison operators
Operator expression Description

like(<attribute>,<value>)

Filters for entities where the value of the specified attribute matches the provided value – also in terms of capitalization, i.e., upper case or lower case. The provided value typically contains at least one of the following wildcards: ? or *.

likeIgnoreCase(<attribute>,<value>)

Ditto. But here, the results' capitalization (upper case or lower case) is not required to match the capitalization used for the filter string of the provided value.

Example:

likeIgnoreCase(description,"*my device*")`

Returns all entities with a description containing "my device", independent of the capitalization of the words. That means results also can contain "My device", "my Device", "My Device", "MY DEVICE", etc.

Logical operators

Bosch Semantic Stack RQL supports the following logical operators for usage with the filter operator.

Table 6. Logical operators
Logical Expression Description

and(<operator1>,<operator2>,…​)

Executes all the provided queries.

or(<operator1>,<operator2>,…​)

The combination of the provided queries.

not(<operator1>,<operator2>,…​)

Negates the provided query.

Example:

and(eq(twinCategory,"Printer"), eq(labels.name,"Floor1"))

Returns all entities with the "twinCategory" attribute’s value "Printer" and at least one label with name "Floor1".

Data types

The values used to filter results can be of several data types, such as strings, times, numbers, Boolean, etc. While these data types are common data types, this section highlights relevant details for the use with Bosch Semantic Stack RQL.

Strings

Can be any Unicode (except Unicode escapes \u1234). The escaping rules of Bosch Semantic Stack RQL follow Java escaping rules closely.

Escape character is the backslash \.

The following table lists possible escape sequences.

Table 7. Escape sequences
How to escape What gets escaped

\\

Escapes the backslash itself.

\t

Escapes a tabulator.

\n

Escapes a new line.

\r

Escapes a carriage return.

\"

Escapes a double quote.

Times

The Bosch Semantic Stack RQL parser (and the corresponding model) supports time literals such as the OffsetDateTime represented in a subset of ISO 8601.

Some less used features of ISO 8601 are not supported (and most likely will not be supported in the near future):

  • Reduced precision: giving a partial time such as hh or hh:mm

  • Fractional hours or minutes: ISO 8601 states that you can use fractions of the most precise time component (hour, minute, second). This is not supported by Bosch Semantic Stack RQL, which only supports a fixed precision including seconds.

Therefore, the following examples are valid ISO 8601 but not valid Bosch Semantic Stack RQL:

  • 2007-12-03T10:15Z (reduced precision—​not supported)

  • 2007-12-03T10:15+4:27 (fractional time components—​not supported)
     

Valid examples for Bosch Semantic Stack RQL are:
2007-12-03T10:15:30.0123Z
2007-12-03t10:15:30+04:37

Integer numbers, real numbers, null

When using the Bosch Semantic Stack RQL parser, data types that come in with a query will be mapped to the corresponding Java data types.

The following table details how incoming RQL data types get parsed to Java data types.

Table 8. Mapping data types
Data type Example Mapping to Java data type

Integer number

ge(foo,42)

Gets parsed into the smallest fitting Java data type (Integer, Long, BigInteger).

Real number

lt(foo,7.23246)

Gets parsed into the Java data type BigDecimal.

null

eq(foo,null)

Gets mapped to null.

Option operator

The option operator sorts and limits API responses. That means, you can prevent an arbitrary order of your retrieved results. With this user-defined sorting, clients are able and responsible for requesting data in the order that fits their needs.

The general form of the option operator string looks as follows:

option=sort(),limit()

As an example, the option string could look like this:

option=sort(-attribute1,+attribute2),limit(10,5)

Sorting

To sort the retrieved data, use the sort operator as part of the option operator.

option=sort([+-]attributeN)

The sort operator sorts the data based on the specified attributes:

  • It starts sorting with the first attribute, then proceeds to the next etc.

  • To separate the attribute names that you require for sorting, use a comma.

  • For each attribute, you can specify whether to sort the results in ascending or descending order, indicating sort order by the + or - prefix.

    • For ascending sort order, use the + prefix.

    • For descending sort order, use the - prefix.

Example:

option=sort(-attribute1,+attribute2,[+-]attributeN)

In the example above, results will first be sorted in descending order for attribute1, then will further be sorted in ascending order for attribute2, and then ascending or descending for any more attributes that might be added.

Pagination

To control the pagination of the retrieved data, use the limit operator as part of the option operator.

option=limit(start,count)

The syntax is related to offset pagination. That means the start and count parts in the string above conceptually stand for the following numbers:

  • start specifies where to start fetching data, also known as offset

  • count indicates how many results to fetch per page

Example:

option=limit(10,5)

In the example above, results will start at result no. 10 and 5 results will be included in the API response.

Currently, only offset pagination is provided with Bosch Semantic Stack RQL. We may add cursor-based pagination in the future.