[uf-discuss] FYI: serialization of hCard into JSON

[Kevin Marks]

Whats the data loss?

One of the nice things about these tools is that you can chain them,
eg piping hCard into PoCo through vCard:
:

http://www.plaxo.com/pdata/vcard?vcardUrl=feeds.technorati.com%2Fcontacts%2Fkevinmarks.com

and piping the result into XOXO for easier human readability:

http://kevinmarks.com/cgi-bin/jsontoxoxo.py?url=http://pulse.plaxo.com/pulse/pdata/vcard?vcardUrl=feeds.technorati.com%2Fcontacts%2Fkevinmarks.com



On Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 8:41 AM, Glenn Jones <glenn.jones at madgex.com> wrote:
> Hi David
>
> I have done quite bit of work around serialising microformats into both
> JSON and XML. The current version of my UfXtract parser is designed to
> consider the description of microformats as a loadable profiles.  When I
> want to add a new microformat I build a new profile object.  As such I
> have also been able to build generic JSON/XML serializers and
> de-serializers for the parser. They allow me to export and import
> microformats in JSON/XML without any data loss or added ambiguity.
>
> A while back I was really interested in moving this work forward within
> the community to get an agreed standard. There did not seem much
> interest at the time, so I documented some of my earlier work on wiki
> [1].  I think that Toby has since done some work with JSON support in
> Swignition.
>
> I have also looked at the Portable Contacts groups work and done some
> experimental conversions demos [2].  Although I think this project is a
> good idea, they have taken an approach with the scheme that allows for
> conversion between the 2 standards but there is some data loss, so it's
> not truly compatible.
>
> jCard[3] is also a good effort, my only problem was I wanted a
> serialization structure which can be applied to any microformat.
>
> It's also interesting to look at the work Yahoo has done with YQL [4],
> which can parse some microformats and return JSON/XML. Maybe not the
> best format, but very interesting toolset.
>
> Although the microformat design process did not originally have the
> concept of an output format, there are times when this would be useful.
> As parsers mature, we need an easy way to support the interchange and
> integration of data. Not just for parsers, but also for the applications
> that use them.
>
> A standard output format should encourage a greater culture of reuse and
> sharing between developers and help collaborative projects such as the
> building of shared test suites and other tools.
>
> If you check out the Microformats OAuth demo on my labs site you can see
> the serializer and de-serializer in action on the test bed page [5].
> You have to create an account on the test site first. [6]
>
> [1] http://microformats.org/wiki/json
> [2] http://lab.madgex.com/portablecontacts/
> [3] http://microformats.org/wiki/jCard
> [4] http://developer.yahoo.com/yql/
> [5] http://lab.madgex.com/microformats/apidemo/testbed.aspx
> [6] http://ufapi.lab.madgex.com/
>
>
> Glenn Jones
>
>
> On Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 9:55 AM, David Janes <davidjanes at blogmatrix.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> I've been playing about with representing microformats ... hCard in
>> particular ... efficiently and usefully into JSON-type data
>> structures. Here's a blog post on the topic [1].
>>
>> Regards, etc...
>>
>> [1]
>> http://code.davidjanes.com/blog/2009/03/02/auapi-encoding-hcards-in-js
>> on/
>>
>
>
>
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