Fuzzy entity query in Wikidata with Sparql times out

Question

I\'m trying to do a fuzzy (ie.. partial or case-insensitive) entity label lookup in Wikidata with Sparql (via the online endpoint). Unfortunately these return a \"Query

Answer 1

You can do this online if you change your filter to use the "contains" function.

Example:

 SELECT ?item WHERE {
            ?item rdfs:label ?label .
            FILTER( contains(lcase(?label), 'arles lin' ))
 }
 LIMIT 20

Reference: contains is listed as one of the XPath functions you can use in SPARQL. See: https://www.w3.org/2009/sparql/wiki/Feature:FunctionLibrary#XQuery_1.0_and_XPath_2.0_Functions_and_Operators

Example 2: (with more triples to optimise results)

PREFIX skos: 
SELECT ?item  ?label WHERE {
            ?item rdfs:label ?label .
            ?item rdf:type dbo:Person   #Works with our without this too, also try skos:Category
            FILTER( contains(lcase(?label), 'arles lin' ) && LANGMATCHES(LANG(?label), "en")) 
 }
 LIMIT 20