Microformats in Drupal

CodeFest2008 Microformats

millette — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 09:33:39 +0000

It's a little late but I figured I should still post this... There's a CodeFest this week-end where a bunch of geeks from different web applications will be present to share and implement a bunch of cool features like Microformats into their favorite CMS. This event wouldn't be possible without the sponsor, PHP Québec. It's open to anyone although it might get a little crowded at la Bande-Passante. I still hope to see you there, Saturday or Sunday :)

8655 Saint-Denis, Montréal (Québec) - exit south from Crémazie métro, walk 30 seconds and you're there.

Montreal & Quebec

vcard does hcard for Drupal5

dman@drupal.org — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 05:18:02 +0000

Seeing as this group looks pretty latent, and I can't see anyone's mentioned it yet,
vcard.module is available to be patched to D5, and
I extended it to addhcard support to user profiles even if you don't use the actual vcard functions.
Just putting it out there, hopefully revive a little interest. I think microformats should be the default in drupal themes wherever possible.

Microformats in Drupal

Microformats' use in Drupal

Mgccl — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 03:32:52 +0000

Microformats are a format based on the common XHTML. There are a few popular Microformats recommendation (I refuse to call it a standard) specifications, most notable are hCard, XFN, hCalendar and XOXO.

XFN

what is XFN

XFN are the most likely to be useful to Drupal(and the entire internet). Out going links are unavoidable part of every site, XFN is made to show the human to human relationship instead of content to content relationship of the out going link by adding rel="tag1 tag2 ... tagn".
I don't know if XFN can be extended, the background for XFN suggest there are a standard set of XFN rel tags [Friend, Acquaintance, Contact, Met, Co-worker, Colleague, Co-resident, Neighbor, Child, Parent, Sibling, Spouse, Kin, Muse, Crush, Date, Sweetheart, Me].

why is it useful for Drupal

XFN is already used by Wordpress in it's blogroll, I believe it can also be used in the same way in Drupal for these few reasons:
1. In the future, search engines might recognize XFN and map out the relationship between 2 links. Thus construct a social map of related people's sites.
2. Superfluous introduction of links to the reader. For example
<a href="http://kuzew.net:81">My colleague and friend Kuzew's site</a>
can be changed to
<a href="http://kuzew.net:81" rel="friend met colleague co-resident">kuzew's site</a>
any small javascript pop up can show up the information in the rel tag when mouse over.
3. A possibility of a module that aggregate all the links posted on the site and use the XFN information for easy browsing.
4. Map out each user's relationship

How to implement it

Outgoing links: XFN does not need to be implemented in the core because there is no core module used for creating out going links; however, it's nice to use it for modules like Links or CCK. XFN can construct it's own taxonomy group, where each one of the possible descriptions are tags.

There are suggestions to implement XFN in the core. Users can tag other users with their relationship. It's really complicated. Different user have different relationship to the same person. XFN did not say it should be in one domain to refer to another, but one node refer to another, but search engines are stupid and get confused easily, it's likely the search engine assumes a site is owned by one person, and 2 user pages link to each other does not make sense to the bots [opinion, might not be true, but this did confused me and I believe I'm smarter than bots.]. Even if the search engines are smart, mapping out the relationship between users are costly, a new table have to be provided to do the relationship linking. I don't believe most Drupal users need a social map and genealogy, that feature is best used as a contribute module.

hCard

What is hCard?

hCard is a microformats used to show profile of a person or a object.

How is it useful to Drupal?

hCard can be a extended part of each user's profile.
hCard as part of the site information

Examples

A uber basic hCard

<div id="hcard-Chao-Xu" class="vcard">
 <span class="fn">Chao Xu</span>
 <div class="org">Mgccl's Blog</div>
 <div class="adr">
  <div class="street-address">123 fake street</div>
 </div>
</div>

hCard is contained inside a div, The div id starts with "hcard", follows by the full name of the user, use hyphens instead of space. The id is not required. the class for the DIV is vcard, it shows this is a hCard that follows the vCard, it's required so parsers understand this as a hCard.
Each node's in the hCard indicates what type of information it contains. for example, fn contain the full name.
Visit the wiki to see the full specification for hCard

How to implement it

The site information can be directly built into the core, adding a few more field to the original site information page and tweak the output.
The user hCard should be a extension to the profile module, create fields(first name, last name, etc) for profile module. Then it will render the hCards inside the user profile pages. Since it creates field inside the profile module, the information on the hCard can be searched though the site.

XOXO

What is XOXO

XOXO is a outline format(not hugs and kisses), intended for describe each node of a list and allow easy rendering. The extension of the outline are done by embed definition list inside each list item.

Why is it useful for Drupal

Lists are more meaningful and easily aggregated in the future.
Book module's Outline
Outline of the taxonomy

How to implement it

Books module's book outline and the chapter outline can be done with XOXO. Description, url and title are 3 of the properties useful for the outline. just adding the following for each node in the list is enough

<dl>
      <dt>description</dt>
        <dd>snap some teaser or something...</dd>
</dl>

List of the taxonomy can be another application of XOXO, description of each category or tag can be embedded with XOXO. Best implemented in the core

There are no other places in the core requires XOXO, users might write posts embed XOXO, but like all other XHTML, user should not depend on core Drupal providing tools for posting, but rather write himself, use a WYSIWYG editor support microformats, or get a contributed filter with this supported.

Some simple rel attributes

What are the rel attributes

The family of rel attributes act as a simple description for links. The most famous one would be rel-nofollow, telling the search engine not to give the link any credit when ranking websites. rel-tag show the link as a tag, it has already implemented in Drupal 6. rel-license describe links connect to a license page.

Why is it useful for Drupal

rel-nofollow can fight spammers
rel-license provide information for bots

How to implement it

rel-nofollow should be part of the core for the comment module. and add a setting for global allow or disallow. Should be easy to add a rel="nofollow" condition(I assume... I don't know what handles external URLs...)
rel-license is not much useful for the core because most sites only link one license at the bottom of the page. but it should be implemented in the CCK, in case anyone uses CCK to create a download site, then each page can have a license field.

Other notes

XFN, rel-nofollow, rel-license and rel-tag all embed themselves inside the rel attribute.
rel is a attribute for a collection of relationships of the linked document to the current one. They all describe the link in some way, XFN is different from the other ones. It describes the relationships between the owners of the documents instead of the document itself.

hCalendar

What is hCalendar

hCalendar is a format to explain a event in time.

Why is it useful for Drupal

Serve as a input/output format for event and calendar CCK, some softwares can interpret them.

Examples

<div class="vevent" id="hcalendar-Owning-noobs">
  <a class="url" href="http://mgccl.com">
    <abbr class="dtstart" title="2007-12-05">December 5th</abbr>, 
    <abbr class="dtend" title="2007-12-06"> 2007</abbr>
    <span class="summary">Owning noobs</span>&mdash; at 
    <span class="location">Long Island</span>
  </a>
  <div class="description">describe the event</div>
  <div class="tags">Tags: 
    <a href="http://eventful.com/events/tags/PWNING">PWNING</a>
    <a href="http://eventful.com/events/tags/NOOB">NOOB</a>
  </div>
</div>

The div class "vevent" defines this block uses hCalendar.
Like hCard, every container for the information are declared by it;s class attribute. All class attributes are obvious what it means. For the nodes contain time, the title attribute contains the ISO8601 time format. It's much easier for computer to read than "October 13th".

How it can be implemented

Clearly, it should work with Event module. Event module will add a page to import hCalendar into database, it can be separate and not depend on any Drupal scripts. Event's output on pages should also be hCalendar, that's all the changes the module should endure. The output are XHTML for each individual event page. Create a template and replace some variable would do.
Calender CCK could do the same.
Microformats parser could help with the parsing.

Some other microformats are in draft stage, it's not recommend for Drupal. hAtom is worth a mention, hAtom embed itself on normal XHTML, enables syndication. Personally I don't like that idea, it's better to create a separate Atom, saves bandwidth.

rel is not important enough for dedicated parameter in l(). l() are for internal links, the only internal link I found would use rel is the rel-tags. l() uses drupal_attributes() to add the attributes, adding a rel flag would be over kill.

Microformats in Drupal

Book review and microformats: help wanted

Benjamin Melançon — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 22:48:00 +0000

If book review could implement the hreview microformat people would be more able to find book reviews on drupal sites using at least a few standard criteria.

I'm currently asking the microformats community for help in doing this, help from other people on the Drupal end would be excellent.

Most advice should probably take place over at the feature request at bookreview.module but discussion here can't hurt.

Thanks in advance!

Microformats in Drupal

Standard Icons

bertboerland — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 10:59:04 +0000

Be sure to checkout -and where possible use!- the excellent work over at factorycity.

Microformats in Drupal

MicroID Module

Digital Spaghetti — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 18:07:11 +0000

Hey fellow Microformatters,

I've been working on a small side-element to Microformats in Drupal and it will be ready to commit to the CVS at some point tommorow.

I have created microid.module, which creates a MicroID hash in the user profile.

At the moment, it's a little hard coded. First off all, there is the function that creates the hash:

<?php
function microid_genhash($email, $url)
{
  return sha1(sha1("mailto:" . trim($email)) . sha1(trim($url)));
}
?>

Now, what I do with this is I get $user->email to generate the email part of the hash, thats fine. But for the profile side, I have specified that there must be a field called profile_homepage. The reason for this is that the URL you want to create the hash with should be your homepage, thats how you will be identified.

The second hard coded bit is there is also a field called profile_microid. This is an invisible (to the user) field in the profile where your MicroID is stored. At the moment, I have only completed the generation code, tommorow I need to finish off my work on the hook_nodeapi part so it can then be embedded around node content like this:

 <div class="hentry node microid-a9993e364706816aba3e25717850c26c9cd0d89d">$content</div>

This means that this post can now be validated against a MicroID checking service, and validated to have come from yourself.

If anyone can maybe help solve the problem of removing the hard coding, and letting the user select which field to apply (must be a URL field however, so may make things easier).

Microformats in Drupal

Another target for hCards

Digital Spaghetti — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 10:37:34 +0000

A module called nodeauthor has recently been brought to my attention and is another module that could do with Microformat support.

From this screenshot you can see it add's a "About Author" at the bottom on a post regarding the node's author.

Microformats in Drupal

Protecting against Microformat spam

Digital Spaghetti — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 11:08:52 +0000

If you look at This comment on my site, it might look like nothing - but check with Tails, and you find a hidden spam hCard.

It's very easy to produce one and embed it in to a post or comment, which will then be indexed by sites such as Technorati.

So what can we do to stop this type of spam before it starts?

Disucss.

Infact, its' been posted here too:

Test

Spam

Post

Some sex company

selling sexy things

20% off all items

This hCard created with the hCard creator.

Unlike my site, it does appear here as style="display:none" is not supported, however the hCard still exists.

Microformats in Drupal

microformat for location.module

Tobias Maier — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 20:08:12 +0000

I asked myself how we could use Microformats in the location module.

this is the patch which came out: Using Microformat for address output

comments and suggestions are welcome :)

Microformats in Drupal

How shall we do hCards?

Digital Spaghetti — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 17:39:21 +0000

I've been thinking about how to do hCards. I built a small example version which I commited to the CVS. It builds up the XHTML using JavaScript and works well as an example, but is very bulky and I can see it becoming very limited.

I'm thinking a better option may be to use the existing Profiles module to build hCards. With Profiles, you can create custom profile fields, and my idea is to build a custom hCard module that takes these fields and allows you to map them to defined hCard fields (i.e. profile-firstname = given-name, profile-company = org, etc) which this module then outputs in the correct format.

I think this would save any need to have a seperate database to store the hCard data, instead hCard would just be built from the profile database each time it is needed. Then there could be an option in node creation to embed a hCard into the post and just creates this from the posters profile. But the question is do we make the call each time, or does it generate the XHTML and embed it in the post?

I would also like to have a hcard embed tag that you can attach to any element, and using jQuery and DOM the hCard could be added to the tag (something like class="embed-hcard"). So for example, if I was linking to Eric Meyers blog, I would do:

<a href="http://meyerweb.com/" class="embed-hcard">Eric Meyer</a>

jQuery would then remove the link and replace it with a hCard.

So what do you think? Any suggestions, any ideas that could move this along?

Microformats in Drupal

Digital Spaghetti — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 11:09:45 +0000

Recently I've really got excited about Microformats and how they can be used to create content that can be aggregated around the internet.

Drupal really needs to support microformats, and I am currently planning and working on a module set that allows this. But I would like your input!

If you read the description of microformats, you can see they are set pieces of information based on existing formats such as vCard and iCal, but written in semantic XHTML, which can then be styled using CSS class selectors. You then have the choice to render them to the page, for example with an event. Or you can embed them in your site, such as linking to someone you have cited on your blog by using the rel tag i.e. XFN.

I suppose the input I would like is how people would like to see these microformats implemented? Here are some of my ideas below for what I would like to see:

Allow each user profile to output to a hCard. This can then be embedded in any node that the user creates for hCard readers to index.
Be able to create an event in Drupal that will output to a hCalendar-formated node, and also be able to create a hCalendar stream so people can subscribe using an event aggregator
Allow users to tag an hCard to an hCalendar event so you can build up list of attendees
Support hResume so someone can put up their CV online, and add their hCard to this as their contact details
Add XFN to links and hCards to build up social networking structures
Support hReview for so people can review an item, website, event, etc. Again, the reviewer can tag their hCard for contact, and other hCards and hCalendar events that tie in with the review

I'd also like to see a microformat parser (such as the one you are suggesting) so people can add external events to their drupal calendar. A JS "viewer" that shows/hides microformats as well, so for example if I linked to gusaus on my site, rather than it being a link to his website, instead a hCard pops up showing details of this person, plus a link to the website.

But really this list could be endless. The other question is how would people like to see them implemented? Would people like to see a CCK-like toolkit that allows you create microformats from set fields? For example, if you create your hCard you may want to add your name, URL and photo - but not include your email. Then you may decide to geotag yourself at a later date, so you can add in this field.

Feel free to bounce any ideas in this group.

Check out my Drupal and Microformats work at http://digitalspaghetti.me.uk/drupal5

Microformats in Drupal

Upcoming.org module and other third party APIs

gusaus — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 21:59:53 +0000

Here's the low-down on the upcoming.org integration module:

Per the developers description: The upcoming.org module enables you to import events and venues from upcoming.org and display them in a calendar using the event module. Upcoming.org is a website that helps you share and keep track of your events. Synchronizing (using upcoming.org as the master repository) is also supported. Additionally, this module exposes the upcoming.org REST API, making clients written to use it interoperable with Drupal. This makes it possible to build a whole network of websites sharing their events, all using a defined API.

robertDouglass adds: "What Stephan has done is nothing short of revolutionary; he has made it so that every Drupal site can be capable of doing the same thing as Upcoming. That means, we now have the same API they do, and we can share event information not only with Upcoming.org, but with other Drupal sites. Let your imagination run free."

It also looks like the module outputs the hCalendar microformat!

ProgrammableWeb shows some great mashups that are being built off the Upcoming, evdb/Eventful, and other event related APIs.

It seems like the great work started with upcoming.org module should open up some amazing possibilities to create some useful tools and services on top of Drupal.

Would love to hear from those more familiar regarding the development of the upcoming.org module and other types of third party API integration. Also wondering how it relates to the Calendar and Event modules as well as what's being laid out in Events 2.0.

Microformats in Drupal

Structured blogging, microformats, and CCK

gusaus — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 22:51:09 +0000

Update: Bumping this rather old post up and over to the Drupal Dojo in hope that it can spur some 'can drupal do this' learning and workshopping.

In the context of a music-arts community site, I'm looking to provide an easy way for registered users to create some of the following types of content:

feature - story/blurb/spotlight on and artist, venue, tastemaker, etc.
interview - interviews with artists and tastemakers.
review - reviews of concerts, cds, dvds
preview - upcoming concert/event

Most of these content types are available as microformats and/or structured blogging, can be easily created on Wordpress and Movable Type, but not Drupal (although Drupal site like GoingOn proves it is possible).

From what I've gathered and previous advice, it seems that CCK is a better, more flexible option, yet I haven't seen any templates (similar to Structured Blogging) in the wild. Is anyone aware of any related development and/or see any value in this sort of thing being available to the community?

Microformats in Drupal