Aehso’s Output

Big switch in direction from Microsoft, it would appear they are now planning to use AtomPub instead of Web3S for Windows Live service APIs they’ll formally be announcing at Mix’08.  As usual, Dare has all the details.

This is a huge endorsement for AtomPub - I’ll bet Bill is delighted (hey, I can even tell him in person at his IWTC talk in an hours time…)

Starting to read through the OpenSocial API documentation the most striking feature is that ALL of the underlying data APIs are Atom and AtomPub based.

• The People Data API exposes people (viewer, owner, friends) via Atom feed documents and Atom entry documents. However, there is no AtomPub support for this feed so people cannot be created/updated/deleted via API. I suspect this will cause some debate as it means some fairly critical data remains locked into the underlying OpenSocial containers
• The Activities Data API exposes activities (news feeds etc) as a Atom feeds. The Activities data feed can be fully manipulated (CRUD) via Atom/AtomPub requests.
• The Persistence Data API exposes name/value pair data (e.g. configuration params) as a Atom feeds. The persistence data feed can be fully manipulated (CRUD) via Atom/AtomPub requests.

I’m off for a curry but more later today. Here’s a teaser though - authentication is a concern….

Great to see Wordpress 2.3 shipping with support for Atom 1.0 and APP (draft 17 compliant I’m guessing). I haven’t updated this blog yet (for fear of borking plugins/themes that I have enabled) but from playing with a local test install this afternoon I see Wordpress now publishes the following feed URLs out of the box:

1. <wordpress-root-URL>/?feed=atom - Atom 0.3 format feed
2. <wordpress-root-URL>/?feed=rss - RSS 0.92 format feed
3. <wordpress-root-URL>/wp-app.php/service - APP Service
4. <wordpress-root-URL>/wp-app.php/posts - “Wordpress Posts” APP collection feed
5. <wordpress-root-URL>/wp-app.php/categories - “Wordpress Posts” APP category document
6. <wordpress-root-URL>/wp-app.php/attachments - “Wordpress Media” (attachments?) APP Collection

I am a little curious about why the HTML doesn’t contain a <link> for 4 though - its absence makes it kind of difficult to auto discover the collection feed URL. I’m also curious why both 1. and 4. exist. I always assumed that the APP collections would just point to the real Atom feed URL, with APP clients authenticating to send HTTP POST, PUT and DELETE requests. Was this necessary because of bad feed readers/aggregators or was my assumption just plain wrong?

Update: Sam Ruby has some good commentary, doesn’t answer my question though…

The Atom Publishing Protocol (APP) is gaining some serious traction since it went final a few weeks ago. YouTube have announced that their new APIs are APP/GData based and now Pete Lacey, Sam Ruby and Tim Ruby Bray have finished adding support for APP to WordPress, in time for WordPress 2.3.

This bodes well as APP and GData are two of the the core protocols supported by the new feed commerce platform that we (nooked) are busy building. Anyone working on services that exposes collections of resources should read the APP spec - the RESTful approach for publishing collections works so well…