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)
  • type (required) - examples:
    • mpn
    • upc
    • isbn
    • issn
    • ean
    • jan
    • sn
    • vin
    • sku
  • value (required) - label may be implied

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

Field Details

The fields of the hListing schema represent the following:

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 15-July-2008 is "0.0," since it has no official standing yet.

Content

name:: This required field contains the name of the item

image:: This optional field contains either an image (as an IMG element) or a link to an image (as an A with rel="image"). The image can be categorized by additional terms such as 'thumb' (for thumbnail), 'full' (for full size image), 'photo' (for a photograph), 'illo' (for an illustration).

description:: This optional field contains the full text representing the written description of the item. The field MAY include valid XHTML markup (e.g. paragraphs). User agents SHOULD preserve any markup. Description could be either a 'summary' or an 'extended' description.

brand:: This optional field can contain either plan text or an |hCard for the organization responsible for the item. Examples would include Sony, Friends of ED, O'Reilly, etc.

uri:: This optional field is a URI for the product at its brand website. It is not to be confused with the hListing 'permalink'.

price:: This optional field is the suggested price for the item. Price could be further refined to define a specific price type, such as 'sale' for sale price, 'regular' for regularly a priced item, 'msrp' for manufacturers retail price, or 'clearance' for a clearance product. It follows the proposed currency format.

savings:: This optional field will describe any savings scenarios in relation to the product price. It follows the proposed currency format.

availability:: Optional text field that describes product availability.

shipping:: Optional field that details shipping.

reviews:: Optional product reviews that can contain text or could follow current hReview format.

buy:: This optional field contains the buying messaging and/or rel="purchase" links pointing to the target URI for buying the product.

Properties & Values

A differentiator of hProduct versus some of the other, more mature formats is the properties and values (p-v) mechanism that is built in to the proposed format. With the wide variation in product attributes, the p-v mechanism provides extensibility to a large array of items without the need for subclassing. There will be several ways of accomplishing property-value associations which will be described below, with several possible shorthands.

p-v:: This optional field initiates a property-value group.

• property:: This required field denotes the property label.

  Anticipated 'property' types include

  • 'artist'
  • 'author'
  • 'released' - hCal event for date of release
  • 'upc'
  • 'isbn' - international standard book number
  • 'sku' - stock keeping unit
  • 'sn' - serial number
  • 'vin' - vehicle identification number
  • 'batch'
  • 'size'
  • 'color'
  • 'uid' - unique id as provided by vendor/manufacturer/retailer
  • 'offer' - offers tied to the product, as provided by vendor/manufacturer/retailer
  • others - possibly around product specs, features
• value:: This required field denotes the property value. The value may be implied in certain shorthands.

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. n.b. that (X)HTML LANG attribute rules still apply as usual, for multilingual aggregators of hProduct.

The following field names have been reused from the hCard and hCalendar microformats: version, description. In addition, brands described by hCards MAY contain any hCard field.

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>

Changes

mid Nov 2006: initial concepting.

15-July-2008: hProduct revival effort

research

• product-examples
• product-formats
• product-brainstorming

Discussions

• Feedback is encouraged on the product-brainstorming page.
• See also blogs discussing this page.

See also

• product
• currency
• hReview
• hListing
• item

Acknowledgements

Much of this document is based on the fine work of the folks behind hListing and their proposal.