[wp-hackers] JSON Syndication

[Mike Purvis]

It's a neat idea, but I have two problems with it:

1. It's too late. There's already a format war between Atom and RSS,
not to mention podcasting enclosures, GeoRSS, and everything else.

2. The #1 thing that makes JSON cool and useful is the &callback=x
parameter, which allows it to be called cross-domain using dynamic
script tags. As an example, see how Google's geocoder works:

http://maps.google.com/maps/geo?output=json&callback=dostuff

However, it be disasterously irresponsible to implement something like
this in Wordpress and encourage people to use it. It's an open
invitation to run arbitrary JavaScript on random domains, a weakness
that XML simply does not have.

At any rate, the first step in this process would be to develop the
feed as a plugin, and demonstrate that it offers something not
available in existing syndication schemes. If this were truly the
case, then perhaps the leet hax0rs would consider adding it to the
core, down the road.

Mike


On 2/15/07, Matt Patenaude <MattPat at mattpat.net> wrote:
> Hey there,
>
> For more than a year now, I've been developing my own content
> management system called Tux CMS (http://blogwithtux.org), which
> takes a lot of its feature ideas and concepts from WordPress (I've
> also ported a few WP themes over to it). Extremely little borrowed
> code, but a lot of borrowed inspiration, so first of all, I'd like to
> say thanks to the WordPress team for an awesome product! :)
>
> Second, though, I would like to suggest a feature. For the past few
> months I've been getting fed up with XML, and getting to know JSON.
> XML can be quite clunky, and really isn't suited for syndication when
> you think about it. JSON, on the other hand, is a very lightweight
> data serialization language, which greatly improves size and
> simplicity of use of syndicated content (it has direct relationships
> to programming structures, so it's easier to access programmatically
> than XML through the DOM).
>
> I'm trying to get a movement going of a syndication format made
> completely in JSON. The first step, I figured, was to develop an
> informal specification: http://howto.blogwithtux.org/index.php?
> title=JSON_feed.
>
> The next step was to create a working implementation of my
> specification: http://www.mattpat.net/json.php. But then, when trying
> to decide on the third step, I wondered, hmm, what would get this the
> most exposure? Why, implementation by one of the best and most widely
> used blogging engines, of course! I'm a big fan of WordPress (despite
> the fact that I write my own CMS... of course, it's open source, so I
> would call it more friendly competition), so I thought I might start
> here.
>
> Is this something WordPress developers might be interested in? I want
> to make this a large movement... I even wrote an article on A List
> Apart for it (still waiting for a response on it).
>
> Let me know!
>
> Sincerely,
> Matt Patenaude
> http://www.mattpat.net
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