[uf-discuss] LinkedIn and Microformats

[Ryan King]

On Jun 14, 2006, at 6:22 AM, Scott Reynen wrote:
> On Jun 14, 2006, at 8:08 AM, Hans Gerwitz wrote:
>
>> Just to +1 Chris: I understand that validation is orthogonal for  
>> Pingerati, but the uF community really needs a reference  
>> validator.  (Where's Pilgrim when you need him?)
>
> I assume Mark is still working on the validator he mentioned a  
> while back.  Meanwhile, the rest of us could help validation  
> efforts by creating test cases.  I know Ryan and others are  
> collecting some tests here:
>
> http://microformats.org/tests/
>
> But those appear to be more parsing tests than validation tests.   
> What about establishing a section on the wiki where we could  
> collaboratively collect sample input and expected validator output  
> (e.g. Pass, Pass with warning "Profile not found," Fail with error  
> "Required property not found," etc. )?

You're right that these cover just parsing/extracting, not authoring  
feedback.

I'm currently working on a microformats parser (in ruby) which I'll  
hopefully soon publish open-source, which I intend to be the basis of  
validator/feedback mechanism.

I'm doing my development test-driven, meaning that anything in the  
parser is there because there's a test case. So, as Scott points out,  
writing test cases could be *extremely* useful at this point.

I know that its not entirely clear from an outsider's perspective  
(ie, outside the 2 or 3 of us who've been writing test cases) how to  
get started with writing them, but if you're interested, I'm more  
than willing to help you get started with it.

I intend to have full test suites which can illustrated how one  
should parse and convert microformats- I think this will be a huge  
help for implementors to become and stay interoperable.

-ryan