rocrate

A Rust library for reading, writing, building, validating, and navigating RO-Crates.

rocrate provides a strongly typed API over the RO-Crate JSON-LD model while preserving lossless serialization. It supports the base RO-Crate specification as well as Workflow RO-Crates and Workflow Run Crates.

Features

• Read RO-Crates from JSON, directories, or ZIP archives
• Build RO-Crates using a fluent builder
• Validate crates against their declared profiles
• Validate against arbitrary profiles
• Automatic context management
• Typed access to workflows, workflow runs, datasets, software, parameters, actions, and more
• Lossless JSON round-tripping
• Read and write complete RO-Crate directories
• Optional ZIP archive support

Supported specifications

• RO-Crate 1.0
• RO-Crate 1.1
• RO-Crate 1.2
• Workflow RO-Crate 1.0
• Workflow Run Crates
• Process Run
• Workflow Run
• Provenance Run
• Workflow Testing RO-Crate terms

Installation

rocrate = "0.1"

ZIP support is enabled, by default. To disable the zip feature

rocrate = { version = "0.1", default-features = false }

or to be explicit about it

rocrate = { version = "0.1",  features = ["zip"] }

Reading a RO-Crate

use rocrate::RoCrate;

let crate_: RoCrate =
    serde_json::from_str(&std::fs::read_to_string("ro-crate-metadata.json")?)?;

or from a directory

let crate_ = RoCrate::from_directory("my-crate")?;

or a ZIP archive

let crate_ = RoCrate::from_zip("crate.zip")?;

Building a crate

use rocrate::{
    RoCrate,
    build::Entity,
    profile::Profile,
};

let crate_ = RoCrate::builder()
        .date_published("2026-01-01")
        .name("Example")
        .description("Built by the builder")
        .license("MIT")
        .conforms_to(Profile::WorkflowRoCrate("1.0".into()))
        .main_workflow(workflow())
        .entity(language())
        .part(Entity::new("README.md", "File").set("encodingFormat", "text/markdown"))
        .build();

Validation

Validate against the profiles claimed by the crate.

let validation = crate_.validate();

if validation.is_conformant() {
    println!("crate is conformant");
}

Typed Views

Rather than manually navigating JSON-LD, the library exposes strongly typed views.

let workflow = crate_.workflow().unwrap();

println!("{}", workflow.name().unwrap());

for input in workflow.inputs() {
    println!("{}", input.name().unwrap());
}

for step in workflow.steps() {
    println!("{:?}", step.position());
}

AI Disclosure

Claude Code (Opus 5 Model) was used to build the initial scaffold/prototype. Code was reviewed and further developed by a human being.

License

Licensed under either of Apache License, Version 2.0 or MIT license.