Drawing a SVG timeline with the http://data.bnf.fr data

The National French Library has recently started to release
its data as RDF/XML. Here, I've played with the biographies of the famous French writers to create a simple timeline.

Unfortunately, this timeline is too large to be displayed here. :-)

However, here is the java code I used to generate this map as a SVG document:

	/**
	* Author:
	* Pierre Lindenbaum PhD
	* Date:
	* July-2011
	* Contact:
	* plindenbaum@yahoo.fr
	* Reference:
	*
	* WWW:
	* http://plindenbaum.blogspot.com
	* Motivation:
	* timeline from http://data.bnf.fr
	*
	*/
	import java.awt.Dimension;
	import java.awt.image.BufferedImage;
	import java.io.File;
	import java.io.FileOutputStream;
	import java.io.IOException;
	import java.io.InputStream;
	import java.io.StringReader;
	import java.net.URL;
	import java.util.ArrayList;
	import java.util.Collections;
	import java.util.Comparator;
	import java.util.HashMap;
	import java.util.Iterator;
	import java.util.List;
	import java.util.Map;
	import java.util.logging.Logger;
	import javax.imageio.ImageIO;
	import javax.imageio.ImageReader;
	import javax.imageio.stream.ImageInputStream;
	import javax.xml.XMLConstants;
	import javax.xml.namespace.NamespaceContext;
	import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilder;
	import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory;
	import javax.xml.stream.XMLOutputFactory;
	import javax.xml.stream.XMLStreamException;
	import javax.xml.stream.XMLStreamWriter;
	import javax.xml.xpath.XPath;
	import javax.xml.xpath.XPathConstants;
	import javax.xml.xpath.XPathExpression;
	import javax.xml.xpath.XPathFactory;
	import org.w3c.dom.Attr;
	import org.w3c.dom.Document;
	import org.w3c.dom.Element;
	import org.w3c.dom.NodeList;
	import org.w3c.tidy.Tidy;
	import org.xml.sax.EntityResolver;
	import org.xml.sax.InputSource;
	import org.xml.sax.SAXException;
	public class BNFTimeline
	{
	static final int ICON_SIZE=64;
	static final int AUTHOR_HEIGHT=ICON_SIZE+12;
	static final int MARGIN=5;
	private static final String SVG="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg";
	private static final String CubicWeb="http://www.logilab.org/2008/cubicweb";
	private static final String HTML="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml";
	private static Logger LOG=Logger.getLogger(BNFTimeline.class.getName());
	private DocumentBuilder docBuilder=null;
	private XPath xpath=null;
	private Map<String, String> prefix2uri=new HashMap<String, String>();
	private Double minDays=null;
	private Double maxDays=null;
	private static class Date implements Comparable<Date>
	{
	String literal;
	int year;
	Integer month;
	Integer day;
	@Override
	public int compareTo(Date o)
	{
	double d= days()-o.days();
	if(d!=0.0) return d<0?-1:1;
	return 0;
	}
	public double days()
	{
	double v= year*365.25;
	if(month!=null)
	{
	v+= (365.25/12.0)*month;
	if(day!=null)
	{
	v+=day;
	}
	}
	return v;
	}
	}
	private class Author
	{
	String url;
	String name;
	String birthPlace;
	Date birthDate;
	String deathPlace;
	Date deathDate;
	String gender;
	String shortBio;
	String depiction;
	Dimension iconSize;
	int y;
	public double x1()
	{
	return convertDate2Pixel(birthDate);
	}
	public double x2()
	{
	return convertDate2Pixel(deathDate);
	}
	void writeXML(XMLStreamWriter w) throws XMLStreamException
	{
	w.writeStartElement("a");
	w.writeAttribute("xlink:href", this.url);
	w.writeAttribute("xlink:target","_blank");
	w.writeStartElement("g");
	w.writeAttribute("title",String.valueOf(name));
	w.writeAttribute("transform", "translate("+x1()+","+(MARGIN+y*(AUTHOR_HEIGHT+MARGIN))+")");
	w.writeStartElement("rect");
	w.writeAttribute("style", "fill:black;stroke:white;");
	w.writeAttribute("height", String.valueOf(AUTHOR_HEIGHT));
	w.writeAttribute("width", String.valueOf(x2()-x1()));
	w.writeEndElement();//rect
	double textLength=(x2()-x1())-(MARGIN/2);
	int shift=MARGIN;
	if(this.iconSize!=null)
	{
	w.writeEmptyElement("image");
	w.writeAttribute("x", String.valueOf(MARGIN+(ICON_SIZE-this.iconSize.width)/2));
	w.writeAttribute("y", String.valueOf(MARGIN+(ICON_SIZE-this.iconSize.height)/2));
	w.writeAttribute("width", String.valueOf(this.iconSize.width));
	w.writeAttribute("height", String.valueOf(this.iconSize.height));
	w.writeAttribute("xlink:href",this.depiction);
	shift+=(ICON_SIZE+MARGIN);
	textLength-=(ICON_SIZE+MARGIN);
	}
	w.writeStartElement("g");
	w.writeAttribute("transform", "translate("+shift+",0)");
	w.writeAttribute("style", "stroke:white;fill:white;font-size:14pt;font-weight:normal;");
	w.writeStartElement("text");
	w.writeAttribute("x", "0");
	w.writeAttribute("y", "18");
	w.writeCharacters(this.name+" ("+birthDate.year+" / "+this.deathDate.year+")");
	w.writeEndElement();
	if(this.shortBio==null) this.shortBio="";
	//note: 123 chars/600px
	// 0.25char/px
	String biography=shortBio;
	int posY=40;
	int maxCharParLine=(int)(textLength*0.2);
	while(biography.length()>0 && posY+10 < AUTHOR_HEIGHT)
	{
	String s=biography;
	if(s.length()>maxCharParLine) s=biography.substring(0,maxCharParLine);
	w.writeStartElement("text");
	w.writeAttribute("style", "font-size:50%;");
	w.writeAttribute("x", "0");
	w.writeAttribute("y", String.valueOf(posY));
	w.writeCharacters(s);
	w.writeEndElement();
	posY+=11;
	biography=biography.substring(s.length());
	}
	w.writeEndElement();//g
	w.writeEndElement();//g
	w.writeEndElement();//a
	}
	}
	private BNFTimeline() throws Exception
	{
	DocumentBuilderFactory f=DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
	f.setCoalescing(true);
	f.setNamespaceAware(true);
	f.setValidating(false);
	f.setExpandEntityReferences(true);
	f.setIgnoringComments(false);
	f.setIgnoringElementContentWhitespace(true);
	this.docBuilder=f.newDocumentBuilder();
	this.docBuilder.setEntityResolver(new EntityResolver()
	{
	@Override
	public InputSource resolveEntity(String publicId, String systemId)
	throws SAXException, IOException
	{
	LOG.info("resolve "+publicId+" "+systemId);
	return new InputSource(new StringReader(""));
	}
	});
	this.prefix2uri.put("h", HTML);
	this.prefix2uri.put("cubicweb", CubicWeb);
	this.prefix2uri.put(XMLConstants.XML_NS_PREFIX, XMLConstants.XML_NS_URI);
	this.prefix2uri.put(XMLConstants.XMLNS_ATTRIBUTE, XMLConstants.XMLNS_ATTRIBUTE_NS_URI);
	this.prefix2uri.put("dc","http://purl.org/dc/terms/");
	this.prefix2uri.put("owl","http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#");
	this.prefix2uri.put("foaf","http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/");
	this.prefix2uri.put("rdagroup2elements","http://RDVocab.info/ElementsGr2/");
	this.prefix2uri.put("rdf","http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#");
	this.prefix2uri.put("skos","http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#");
	this.prefix2uri.put("xfoaf","http://www.foafrealm.org/xfoaf/0.1/");
	XPathFactory xpathFactory=XPathFactory.newInstance();
	this.xpath=xpathFactory.newXPath();
	this.xpath.setNamespaceContext(new NamespaceContext()
	{
	@SuppressWarnings({ "rawtypes", "unchecked" })
	@Override
	public Iterator getPrefixes(String namespaceURI)
	{
	return prefix2uri.keySet().iterator();
	}
	@Override
	public String getPrefix(String ns)
	{
	for(String k:prefix2uri.keySet())
	{
	if(prefix2uri.get(k).equals(ns)) return k;
	}
	return null;
	}
	@Override
	public String getNamespaceURI(String prefix)
	{
	String u=prefix2uri.get(prefix);
	return (u!=null?u:XMLConstants.NULL_NS_URI);
	}
	});
	}
	private int getScreenWidthInPixel()
	{
	return 15000;
	}
	private double convertDate2Pixel(Date d)
	{
	return getScreenWidthInPixel()*((d.days()-minDays)/((double)this.maxDays-(double)this.minDays));
	}
	private void parse() throws Exception
	{
	Tidy tidy = new Tidy();
	tidy.setXHTML(true);
	File xmlFile=File.createTempFile("_tmp", ".xml");
	xmlFile.deleteOnExit();
	final String prefix="http://data.bnf.fr/";
	int pageIndex=1;
	XPathExpression expr=this.xpath.compile(".//h:li/h:a[@href]");
	List<Author> authors=new ArrayList<Author>();
	//scan each index
	for(;;)
	{
	boolean found=false;
	URL url=new URL("http://data.bnf.fr/liste-auteurs/page"+pageIndex);
	LOG.info(url.toString());
	FileOutputStream fout=new FileOutputStream(xmlFile);
	InputStream in=url.openStream();
	tidy.parse(in,fout);
	in.close();
	fout.flush();
	fout.close();
	Document dom=this.docBuilder.parse(xmlFile);
	NodeList L=(NodeList)expr.evaluate(dom, XPathConstants.NODESET);
	for(int i=0;i< L.getLength();++i)
	{
	String href=Element.class.cast(L.item(i)).getAttribute("href");
	if(!href.startsWith(prefix)) continue;
	if(!href.substring(prefix.length()).matches("[0-9]+/[a-z\\-A-Z_0-9]+/"))
	{
	LOG.info("ignoring "+href);
	continue;
	}
	Author author=new Author();
	author.url=href;
	authors.add(author);
	found=true;
	}
	in.close();
	if(!found) break;
	++pageIndex;
	}
	xmlFile.delete();
	int index=0;
	while(index< authors.size())
	{
	Author author=authors.get(index);
	LOG.info(author.url+"rdf.xml");
	Document dom=this.docBuilder.parse(author.url+"rdf.xml");
	Element root=(Element)xpath.evaluate("rdf:RDF/rdf:Description[rdf:type/@rdf:resource='http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/Person']",dom,XPathConstants.NODE);
	if(root==null)
	{
	authors.remove(index);
	continue; //e.g. "Academie Fr"
	}
	author.name=(String)xpath.evaluate("dc:title[1]", root,XPathConstants.STRING);
	author.birthDate= parseDate((String)xpath.evaluate("rdagroup2elements:dateOfBirth", root,XPathConstants.STRING));
	author.birthPlace = (String)xpath.evaluate("rdagroup2elements:placeOfBirth", root,XPathConstants.STRING);
	author.deathDate = parseDate((String)xpath.evaluate("rdagroup2elements:dateOfDeath", root,XPathConstants.STRING));
	author.deathPlace = (String)xpath.evaluate("rdagroup2elements:placeOfDeath", root,XPathConstants.STRING);
	author.gender = (String)xpath.evaluate("foaf:gender", root,XPathConstants.STRING);
	author.shortBio = (String)xpath.evaluate("rdagroup2elements:biographicalInformation", root,XPathConstants.STRING);
	author.depiction=(String)xpath.evaluate("foaf:depiction/@rdf:resource",root,XPathConstants.STRING);
	if(author.birthDate==null || author.deathDate==null
	|| author.deathDate.year<1400 || author.birthDate.year<1400)//TODO
	{
	authors.remove(index);
	continue;
	}
	if(author.depiction!=null && !author.depiction.trim().isEmpty())
	{
	author.iconSize=getDepictionSize(author.depiction);
	}
	if(this.minDays==null || author.birthDate.days()<this.minDays)
	{
	this.minDays= author.birthDate.days();
	}
	if(this.maxDays==null || author.deathDate.days()>this.maxDays)
	{
	this.maxDays= author.deathDate.days();
	}
	++index;
	}
	this.minDays-=360;
	this.maxDays+=360;
	//sort persons on birth-date/death-date
	Collections.sort(authors, new Comparator<Author>()
	{
	@Override
	public int compare(Author o1, Author o2)
	{
	int i=o1.birthDate.compareTo(o2.birthDate);
	if(i!=0) return i;
	return o1.deathDate.compareTo(o2.deathDate);
	}
	});
	List<Author> remains=new ArrayList<Author>(authors);
	int nLine=-1;
	while(!remains.isEmpty())
	{
	++nLine;
	Author first=remains.remove(0);
	first.y=nLine;
	while(true)
	{
	Author best=null;
	int bestIndex=-1;
	for(int i=0;i< remains.size();++i)
	{
	Author next=remains.get(i);
	if(next.x1()< first.x2()+5) continue;
	if(best==null ||
	(next.x1()-first.x2() < best.x1()-first.x2()))
	{
	best=next;
	bestIndex=i;
	}
	}
	if(best==null) break;
	first=best;
	first.y=nLine;
	remains.remove(bestIndex);
	}
	}
	FileOutputStream fout=new FileOutputStream("output.svg");
	XMLOutputFactory xmlfactory= XMLOutputFactory.newInstance();
	XMLStreamWriter w= xmlfactory.createXMLStreamWriter(fout,"UTF-8");
	w.writeStartDocument("UTF-8","1.0");
	w.writeStartElement("svg");
	w.writeAttribute("xmlns", SVG);
	w.writeAttribute("xmlns:xlink","http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink");
	w.writeAttribute("version","1.1");
	w.writeAttribute("width",String.valueOf(getScreenWidthInPixel()));
	w.writeAttribute("height",String.valueOf(MARGIN+((nLine+1)*(AUTHOR_HEIGHT+MARGIN))));
	w.writeAttribute("style", "fill:none;stroke:black;stroke-width:1px;");
	w.writeEmptyElement("rect");
	w.writeAttribute("x","0");
	w.writeAttribute("y","0");
	w.writeAttribute("width",String.valueOf(getScreenWidthInPixel()-1));
	w.writeAttribute("height",String.valueOf(MARGIN+((nLine+1)*(AUTHOR_HEIGHT+MARGIN))-1));
	w.writeAttribute("style", "fill:lightgray;stroke:black;");
	for(Author author:authors)
	{
	author.writeXML(w);
	}
	w.writeEndDocument();//svg
	w.close();
	fout.flush();
	fout.close();
	}
	private Dimension getDepictionSize(String resourceFile) throws Exception
	{
	BufferedImage img=ImageIO.read(new URL(resourceFile));
	Dimension d= new Dimension(img.getWidth(),img.getHeight());
	if(d.getWidth()< d.getHeight())
	{
	double ratio= d.getWidth()/(double)d.getHeight();//<0
	int len= (int)(ICON_SIZE*ratio);
	d.width=len;
	d.height=ICON_SIZE;
	}
	else
	{
	double ratio= d.getHeight()/(double)d.getWidth();//<0
	int len= (int)(ICON_SIZE*ratio);
	d.height=len;
	d.width=ICON_SIZE;
	}
	return d;
	}
	private Date parseDate(String s)
	{
	if(s==null || s.isEmpty()) return null;
	Date d=new Date();
	d.literal=s;
	s=s.trim();
	if(s.startsWith("-"))
	{
	return null;
	}
	if(s.matches("[0-3][0-9]\\-[0-1][0-9]\\-[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]"))
	{
	String tokens[]=s.split("[\\-]");
	d.day=Integer.parseInt(tokens[0]);
	d.month=Integer.parseInt(tokens[1]);
	d.year=Integer.parseInt(tokens[2]);
	}
	else if(s.matches("[0-1][0-9]\\-[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]"))
	{
	String tokens[]=s.split("[\\-]");
	d.month=Integer.parseInt(tokens[0]);
	d.year=Integer.parseInt(tokens[1]);
	}
	else if(s.matches("[0-9]{1,4}"))
	{
	d.year=Integer.parseInt(s);
	}
	else
	{
	return null;
	}
	return d;
	}
	public static void main(String[] args) {
	try
	{
	BNFTimeline app=new BNFTimeline();
	int optind=0;
	while(optind< args.length)
	{
	if(args[optind].equals("-h") ||
	args[optind].equals("-help") ||
	args[optind].equals("--help"))
	{
	System.err.println("Options:");
	System.err.println(" -h help; This screen.");
	return;
	}
	else if(args[optind].equals("-L"))
	{
	}
	else if(args[optind].equals("--"))
	{
	optind++;
	break;
	}
	else if(args[optind].startsWith("-"))
	{
	System.err.println("Unknown option "+args[optind]);
	return;
	}
	else
	{
	break;
	}
	++optind;
	}
	if(optind!=args.length)
	{
	System.err.println("Illegal number of arguments.");
	return;
	}
	app.parse();
	}
	catch(Throwable err)
	{
	err.printStackTrace();
	}
	}
	}

view raw BNFTimeline.java hosted with ❤ by GitHub

See also: Freebase and the History of Sciences

That's it,

Pierre