adr

<entry-title>adr</entry-title> This document represents a draft microformat specification. Although drafts are somewhat mature in the development process, the stability of this document cannot be guaranteed, and implementers should be prepared to keep abreast of future developments and changes. Watch this wiki page, or follow discussions on the #microformats IRC channel to stay up-to-date.

adr (pronounced "adder"; FAQ: "why 'adr'?") is a simple format for marking up address information, suitable for embedding in HTML, XHTML, Atom, RSS, and arbitrary XML. adr is a 1:1 representation of the adr property in the vCard standard (RFC2426) in HTML, one of several open microformat standards. It is also a property of hCard.

Draft Specification

Editor/Author

Tantek Çelik (http://tantek.com/, and before at Technorati, Inc.)

Copyright

Per the public domain release on my user page, this specification is released into the public domain.

Public Domain Contribution Requirement. Since the author(s) released this work into the public domain, in order to maintain this work's public domain status, all contributors to this page agree to release their contributions to this page to the public domain as well. Contributors may indicate their agreement by adding the public domain release template to their user page per the Voluntary Public Domain Declarations instructions. Unreleased contributions may be reverted/removed.

Patents

This specification is subject to a royalty free patent policy, e.g. per the W3C Patent Policy, and IETF RFC3667 & RFC3668.

Inspiration and Acknowledgments

Thanks to everyone who participated in the Geo Microformat BOF at O'Reilly's Where 2.0 conference, and in particular to Nat Torkington and Vee McMillen of O'Reilly for arranging and hosting the BOF.

Introduction and Background

The vCard standard (RFC2426), has been broadly and interoperably implemented (e.g. Apple's Address Book application). The hCard microformat has similarly received significant adoption, from numerous sites publishing the format, to hCard to vCard proxies, to clientside javascript parsers.

At the Where 2.0 conference in June 2005, there was widespread recognition that the community needed a way to simply and easily publish visible, extractable, address information on the Web, given how often bloggers, and numerous other sites publish address information. The geo microformat BOF discussed this very topic, and concluded with a consensus decision to just try using adr from vCard/hCard.

This specification introduces the adr microformat, which is a 1:1 representation of the aforementioned adr property from the vCard standard, by simply reusing the adr property and sub-properties as-is from the hCard microformat.

Publishers can both embed adr addresses directly in their web pages and feeds, as well as markup existing addresses in the context of the rest of the information in their web pages and feeds.

If the publisher knows and is publishing the name of the location in addition to its address, then the publisher MUST use hCard instead of just adr to publish the name and address of the location.

Semantic XHTML Design Principles

Note: the Semantic XHTML Design Principles were written primarily within the context of developing hCard and hCalendar, thus it may be easier to understand these principles in the context of the hCard design methodology (i.e. read that first). Tantek

XHTML is built on XML, and thus XHTML based formats can be used not only for convenient display presentation, but also for general purpose data exchange. In many ways, XHTML based formats exemplify the best of both HTML and XML worlds. However, when building XHTML based formats, it helps to have a guiding set of principles.

1. Reuse the schema (names, objects, properties, values, types, hierarchies, constraints) as much as possible from pre-existing, established, well-supported standards by reference. Avoid restating constraints expressed in the source standard. Informative mentions are ok.
   1. For types with multiple components, use nested elements with class names equivalent to the names of the components.
   2. Plural components are made singular, and thus multiple nested elements are used to represent multiple text values that are comma-delimited.
2. Use the most accurately precise semantic XHTML building block for each object etc.
3. Otherwise use a generic structural element (e.g. <span> or <div>), or the appropriate contextual element (e.g. an <li> inside a <ul> or <ol>).
4. Use class names based on names from the original schema, unless the semantic XHTML building block precisely represents that part of the original schema. If names in the source schema are case-insensitive, then use an all lowercase equivalent. Components names implicit in prose (rather than explicit in the defined schema) should also use lowercase equivalents for ease of use. Spaces in component names become dash '-' characters.
5. Finally, if the format of the data according to the original schema is too long and/or not human-friendly, use <abbr> instead of a generic structural element, and place the literal data into the 'title' attribute (where abbr expansions go), and the more brief and human readable equivalent into the element itself. Further informative explanation of this use of <abbr>: Human vs. ISO8601 dates problem solved

Format

Singular Properties

See hCard: Singular vs. Plural Properties for the list of which "adr" properties (sub-properties in hCard) are singular. Note analysis in progress: adr-singular-properties.

Human vs. Machine readable

If an <abbr> element is used for a property, then the title attribute of the <abbr> element is the value of the property, instead of the contents of the element, which instead provide a human presentable version of the value.

Similarly, if an <img> element is used for one or more properties, it must be treated as follows:

1. For the PHOTO property and any other property that takes a URL as its value, the src attribute provides the property value.
2. For other properties, the <img> element's alt attribute is the value of the property.

Value excerpting

Sometimes only part of an element which is the equivalent for a property should be used for the value of the property. For this purpose, the special class name value is used to excerpt out the subset of the element that is the value of the property. See hCard for details on this.

Root Class Name

The root class name for an adr address is adr.

Property List

This is the list of properties in adr, taken from hCard:

• post-office-box
• extended-address
• street-address
• locality
• region
• postal-code
• country-name

The type sub-property is omitted because without the context of a type of address for whom, it doesn't make much sense.

XMDP Profile

See hcard-profile for the XMDP profile of hCard which contains the above complete list of properties, with references to their RFC 2426 definitions.

Parsing Details

See hCard parsing, with the only difference being that "adr" is the root class name, rather than "vcard".

Examples

This section is informative.

Sample adr

Here is a sample adr:

<div class="adr">
 <div class="street-address">665 3rd St.</div>
 <div class="extended-address">Suite 207</div>
 <span class="locality">San Francisco</span>,
 <span class="region">CA</span>
 <span class="postal-code">94107</span>
 <div class="country-name">U.S.A.</div>
</div>

which might be displayed as:

665 3rd St.

Suite 207

San Francisco, CA 94107

U.S.A.

Note that this is a live adr microformat, which will be found on this page by parsers.

More Examples

See hCard example ADR for more examples.

See adr examples for additional uses of ADR.

Examples in the wild

This section is informative.

The following sites have published adrs, outside their normal context of hCards, and thus are a great place to start for anyone looking for examples "in the wild" to try parsing, indexing, organizing etc., in addition to hCard examples in the wild. If you find adrs outside of hCards anywhere else, feel free to add them to the top of this list. Once the list grows too big, we'll make a separate wiki page.

• Grows on You uses the microformat to mark up the addresses of open gardens.
• Stems Florist uses the microformat on the front page to markup up the two store addresses
• theMechanism uses the adr microformat to mark up the locations of

their offices.

• Mister-Map.com uses the adr microformat to mark up the streets, zip-codes, regions and country names.

(See also hcard-examples-in-wild)

Implementations

This section is informative.

The following implementations have been developed which either generate or parse adrs outside the context of hCards. If you have an adr implementation, feel free to add it to the top of this list. Once the list grows too big, we'll make a separate wiki page.

• GreaseRoute is a GreaseMonkey user script (also available as a simple Firefox Extension) which will add icons for displaying the location, or route to, an adr using a MapQuest map. The route is displayed from the starting location based on the viewer's IP-Address as determined by the HostIP geolocation service.

• GreaseRouteEmbed is another GreaseMonkey user script that will actually embed a route image in the webpage when the user clicks the "route" link.

• GeoPress is a WordPress plugin that supports embedding adrs, geo, maps (dynamically switchable between Google-Yahoo-Microsoft Maps), and GeoRSS feeds.

• pnh_mf is a plugin for Textpattern that supports embedding adrs and other microformats in templates and blog posts. Written by Chris Casciano.

• The hCard creator, though it creates complete hCards, can also be used simply to create adrs by filling out the address portion and simply copy and pasting the <div class="adr"> element and its contents.

References

Normative References

• hCard

Informative References

• vCard RFC2426 (HTML reformatted version of RFC2426)
• XHTML 1.0 SE

Similar Work

• geo
• hCalendar
• XOXO

Work in progress

This specification is a work in progress. As additional aspects are discussed, understood, and written, they will be added.

Discussions

• See blogs discussing this page.

Q&A

• If you have any questions about hCard, check the hCard FAQ first, and if you don't find answers, add your questions! (Odds are that any adr question will apply to hCard as well).
• See also for other methods of feedback.

Issues

• Please add any issues with the specification to the separate hCard issues document. Ditto.

Related Pages

• adr
• adr-examples
• adr-cheatsheet
• adr forms part of hcard, so for feedback and issues, please use:
  • hcard-feedback
  • hcard-issues