hproduct-proposal
draft hProduct Proposal
hProduct is a format suitable for embedding in (X)HTML, Atom, RSS, and arbitrary XML. hProduct would be related to several microformats (including hListing and hReview) and would be an open standard.
Authors
(in alphabetical order)
- Craig Cook, Focal Curve
- Aaron Gustafson, Easy! Designs
- Paul Lee, Google Product Search
- Jay Myers
Introduction
The web is a thriving marketplace with a plethora of vendors scattered across the globe. Sifting through this mass of information is difficult when it is unstructured. The hProduct microformat will bring order and structure to the chaos, making it easy for people to list the products they offer and easy for Web Services to consume that product information for analysis and syndication. This proposal follows the common practices of ecommerce sites such as Amazon, BestBuy.com, Buy.com, and AutoByTel.
hProduct is compatible and combinable with hListing and hReview.
Scope
Giving details about a particular product is sometimes very complex as parameters are differnt for books and CDs than they are for iPods or cars. It should be very easy to mark up an item using hProduct and the syntax should be simple yet flexible enough for more advanced applications.
Out of Scope
This microformat does not intend to replicate any of the content proposed within hListing and would defer all money/transactional matters to that microformat. This microformat also does not attempt to specify a product ontology, or category-specific attributes; instead, it aims to create a framework to allow for flexible expression of both.
Format
In General
The hProduct format is based on a set of fields common to numerous ecommerce sites and formats in use today on the web.
Schema
The hProduct schema consists of the following:
| field | required | description |
|---|---|---|
| availability | optional | text; can be further refined as availability type (instore, online, specialorder) |
| brand | optional | text or hCard for organization that manufacturers or produces the item, e.g., Sony |
| buy | optional | text; purchase messaging and/or rel="purchase" indicating target uri for purchasing item |
| category | optional | text; single phrase or open string |
| condition | optional | text, e.g., 'new' 'used' or 'refurbished' |
| description | optional | text; may include valid XHTML markup (e.g., paragraphs), user agents should preserve any markup; can be denoted as 'summary' or 'extended' |
| image | optional | image (IMG element) or image link (rel='image'); can be further refined (thumb, full, photo, illo) |
| model | optional | text |
| name | required | text; i.e., product title |
| price | optional | floating point number; can be further refined by specific type (sale, regular, msrp, clearance); should follow currency format |
| quantity | optional | integer |
| reviews | optional | text; hReview |
| shipping | optional | text; shipping messaging, e.g., 'ships within 24-48 hours' |
| uri | optional | uri to product page; href can contain rel='product' |
| version | optional | text |
| version | optional | text |
The identifier structure is used to describe product identifiers like UPC or SKU, and is designed to accommodate new or as-yet-unidentified identifiers.
- identifier (optional)
In addition to the above fields, hProduct includes a properties and values (p-v) mechanism to accommodate the wide variation in product attributes.
- p-v (optional)
- property (required) - examples:
- accessory for
- artist
- author
- color
- compatible with
- quantity in lot
- rating - can be further denoted into rating types (product || merchant || mpaa || esrb || others)
- released - hcalendar event for date of release
- size
- value (required) - label may be implied
- property (required) - examples:
Additional Details
Version
version: This optional field permits hProduct publishers to specify a particular version of hProduct that their content uses. By omitting this field, the publisher is stating that implementations may interpret the hListings according to any version of the hProduct specification. The value for this proposal as of 28-Oct-2008 is "0.0," since it has no official standing yet.
Cross-cutting issues
Internationalization: Though there are many English-language tokens, they are only used as invisible class-names; user-visible listing information can be completely localized. Note that (X)HTML LANG attribute rules still apply as usual, for multilingual aggregators of hProduct.
Certain field names have been reused from the hCard and hCalendar microformats, e.g., version, description. In addition, brands described by hProduct may contain hCard fields.
Examples (Preliminary)
Simple Product
The Pick of Destiny by Tenacious D The Pick of Destiny is the highly anticipated soundtrack to the upcoming New Line Cinema comedy, Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny. An epic musical adventure, the film follows Tenacious D (Jack Black and Kyle Gass) on their quest to obtain the Pick and become The Greatest Band on Earth. Released: November 14, 2006 Label: Sony UPC: 82796948912
<div class="hproduct">
<h4 class="name">The Pick of Destiny</h4>
<h5 class="p-v">by <span class="property artist">Tenacious D</span></h5>
<p class="description summary">The Pick of Destiny is the highly
anticipated soundtrack to the upcoming New Line Cinema comedy, Tenacious
D in the Pick of Destiny. An epic musical adventure, the film follows
Tenacious D (Jack Black and Kyle Gass) on their quest to obtain the Pick
and become The Greatest Band on Earth.</p>
<ul>
<li class="p-v"><span class="property">Released</span>:
<span class="value"><abbr title="2006-11-14T12:00:01-05:00">November
14, 2006</abbr></span></li>
<li>Label: <span class="brand">Sony</span></li>
<li class="p-v"><span class="property">UPC</span>:
<span class="value">82796948912</span></li>
</ul>
</div>
Examples in Production
- Description of BestBuy.com implementation
Changes
mid Nov 2006: initial concepting.
15-July-2008: hProduct revival effort
28-Oct-2008: Agreement on initial hProduct draft
research
Discussions
- Feedback is encouraged on the product-brainstorming page.
- See also blogs discussing this page.
See also
Acknowledgements
Much of this document is based on the fine work of the folks behind hListing and their proposal.