Version: 0.1

Contact: Daniel Goldshlack and Paul Pritchard, mBLAST

Updated: Jun 16, 2008

1 Overview

The objective of mBLAST's Article Extensions is to define the extensions necessary to describe an article, that is, a composition on a specific topic or subject, usually appearing in periodicals such as a journal, magazine, or newspaper. The extensions define attributes that are unique to articles and are not contained in standard RSS or Atom feeds, such as keywords and publisher.

While mBLAST prefers ATOM feeds because of the ATOM standard's ability to support extensions, we can also accept the same extensions inside RSS feeds.

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4287.txt

http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-atom10.html

1.1 Namespaces and Version

The XML namespace URI for the XML data format described in this specification is:

http://www.mblast.com/articles/0.1

In this spec, the prefix "article:" is used for the namespace URI identified above. For example:

<feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"
xmlns:article="http://www.mblast.com/articles/0.1">

1.2 Notational Conventions

In this document, the key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119.

All date/times values MUST conform to the "date-time" production in [RFC3339]. In addition, an uppercase "T" character MUST be used to separate date and time, and an uppercase "Z" character MUST be present in the absence of a numeric time zone offset.

2 Usage of standard ATOM elements

2.1 <atom:title> element

The title element should contain the title of the article.

2.2 <atom:link> element

The link element should contain the URL of the article on the publisher's web site.

2.3 <atom:author> element

The author element should contain the name of the author of the article (the article's byline), and optionally the URI and email address of the author. Multiple authors should be included in multiple atom:author elements.

2.4 <atom:summary> element

The summary element should contain a short synopsis or abstract of the article.

2.5 <atom:content> element

The content element should contain the full text of the article. This is used by mBLAST to create its full-text search index, but is not available to mBLAST users.

2.6 <atom:published> element

The published element should contain the date the article was published.

3 Extensions

3.1 <article:publication> element within <entry>

The article:publication element contains information about the publication in which the article appears. This element allows articles from different publications to be included in the same feed.

3.1.1 <name> element within <article:publication>

The name element contains the name of the the publication in which the article appears.

3.1.2 <uri> element within <article:publication>

The uri element contains the uniform resource locator for the main web page of the publication.

3.2 <article:keywords> element within <entry>

The article:keywords element contains a list of keywords for the article. Keywords or tags associated with the article can be included in this element. The list of keywords should be separated with commas.

4 Example

Please use this example to understand the use of the article extensions.

<feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"
  xmlns:articlef="http://www.mblast.com/articles/0.1"
  xml:lang="en" xml:base="http://www.computerworld.com">
  <id>http://www.computerworld.com/feeds/articles.atom</id>
  <title>ComputerWorld Articles Feed</title>
  <updated>2006-03-16T12:00:00Z</updated>
  <link rel="self" 
  href="http://www.computerworld.com/feeds/articles.xml" />
  <link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml"
    href="http://www.computerworld.com/feeds/articles.atom"/>
  <entry>
    <id>http://www.computerworld.com
	/story/0,10801,109577,00.html</id>
    <title>Microsoft tests ad network for Windows Live</title>
    <link href="http://www.computerworld.com
	/story/0,10801,109577,00.html" />
    <updated>2006-03-15T12:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>Steven Schwankert</name>
    </author>
    <summary>
      Microsoft Corp. has begun testing display 
	advertisements for Windows Live and its other 
	upcoming online services, the company said 
	Wednesday.
    </summary>
    <content type="xhtml">
      <div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
        <p>Microsoft Corp. has begun 
	testing display advertisements for Windows 
	Live and its other upcoming online services, 
	the company said Wednesday.</p>
	<p>The advertising revenue will be 
	used to fund the services, which will be 
	offered for free or at low cost, the 
	company said.</p>
	<p>The Windows Live ads are 
	being tested in MSN Spaces in Australia and 
	Italy, while Windows Live Mail ads are 
	being tested in various markets, including 
	Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, 
	Germany, Italy, Spain, the U.K. and the U.S.
	Office Live ads are initially being tested 
	in the U.S.</p>
	<p>The company is currently testing 
	ads from 20 companies, including Coca-Cola 
	Brazil, J.C. Penney Co. and Monster 
	Worldwide Inc., it said.</p>
	<p>The company outlined its plan in 
	November to offer online versions of its 
	software applications. They'll include 
	services like domain names, Web site and 
	company e-mail accounts, which will be free, 
	and other subscription-based services.</p>
	<p>U.S. businesses can register for a 
	beta program. The final public  services will 
	be available in late 2006, the company 
	said.</p>
      </div>
    </content>
    <article:publication>
      <name>Computerworld>/name>
      <uri>http://www.computerworld.com">/uri>
    </article:publication>
    <article:keywords>able, baker</article:keywords>
  </entry>
</feed>

5 Licensing Information

mBLAST's copyrights in this specification are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License (version 2.5). To view a copy of this license, please visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/. As to software implementations, mBLAST is not aware of any patent claims it owns or controls that would be necessarily infringed by a software implementation that conforms to the specification's extensions. If mBLAST later becomes aware of any such necessary patent claims, mBLAST also agrees to offer a royalty-free patent license on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms and conditions to any such patent claims for the purpose of publishing and consuming the extensions set out in the specification.