microformats

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

UPDATE: I've cross-posted this over at Drupal Dojo since there seems to be a few folks interested in collaborating and/or learning about this project.

In checking the status of the Upcoming.org module (http://drupal.org/project/upcomingorg), I noticed some familiar names from our Los Angeles group inquiring and/or offering assistance. Being that we've discussed this type of integration for some projects (ladrupal.org, local/media portal), maybe we can help KarenS resuscitate and expand the scope of this module (integrating additional event/ticketing portals)?

"Relationship" I understood as relationships between fields (nodes are many relationships, which are subject of more advanced process).

Wanted features:

1. Powerful and without limitation thanks to the most abstract (see: "everything is a field", compare this to: Global CCK fields, A controversial(?) point: store translations as nodes).
2. Build-in categorization features.
3. Build-in views features (listing fields, not necessary nodes).
4. Build-in menu features.
5. Support for Semantic Web/Microformats/similar.

Observations about current situation:

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:

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.

This (somewhat old) post from Zacker does a great job summing up a catch-22 that comes along with an open source community like Drupal (allow me to excerpt):

<

blockquote>

• most of the value created by the Drupal community that vendors and consultants rely on to sell as services to customers come from unpaid core contributions
• many of the seasoned Drupal core hackers are getting job offers left and right to come and do Drupal consulting full time.
• This is creating a scenario in which while many more people are paying their bills through Drupal hacking and more and more business are built around business value created by the Drupal community, it is not getting any easier to make sure the heavy lifting on core work is getting done.

What can we do now to make sure that some of the money coming into the community over the next year is put back in to supporting the core work that we as a community are relying on?

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.

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:

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p class="vcard">

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 :)

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.

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.