Improving Linked Data Development Experience with LDkit

The adoption of Semantic Web and Linked Data technologies in web application development has been impacted by less-than-optimal development experience. Front-end web application development is inherently challenging, as developers must master a multitude of technologies and frameworks even to build simple applications. Adding Linked Data technologies to the mix further complicates this challenge by increasing the number of technologies that need to be learned. The Semantic Web community has historically struggled to provide front-end developers with quality tools and libraries for working with Linked Data; consequently, developers often prefer traditional solutions based on relational or document databases that offer far superior developer experience. To address this issue, we developed LDkit, an innovative Object Graph Mapping framework for TypeScript. The framework works as the data access layer, providing model-based abstraction for querying and retrieving RDF data. LDkit transforms the data between RDF representation and TypeScript primitives according to user-defined data schemas, simplifying the use of the data and ensuring end-to-end data type safety. This paper introduces LDkit, describes its design and implementation fundamentals with focus on its developer interface and integration with other related technologies. Building on community feedback and experience from using LDkit, we introduce major enhancements that simplify data querying and update for common and uncommon web application scenarios, further improving developer experience. Finally, we demonstrate impact of LDkit by examining usage of the framework in real-world projects. LDkit aims to enhance the web ecosystem by making Linked Data more accessible and integrated into mainstream web technologies.