Version: 0.1

Contact: Daniel Goldshlack and Paul Pritchard, mBLAST

Updated: Jul 23, 2008

1 Overview

The objective of mBLAST's Product Extensions is to define the extensions necessary to describe a product, that is, a product is an object or service that a company sells. The extensions define attributes that are unique to products 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/products/0.1

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

<feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"
xmlns:product="http://www.mblast.com/products/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 name of the product.

2.2 <atom:author> element

The author element should contain the name of the person who should be contacted about the product (sales contact). The author element is optional.

2.3 <atom:summary> element

The summary element should contain a short description of the product.

2.4 <atom:content> element

The content element should contain a long description of the product.

2.5 <atom:link> element

The link element should contain the URL of the product on the manufacturer's web site. The link element is optional.

2.6 <atom:published> element

The published element should contain the date the product information was published.

3 Extensions

3.1 <product:manufacturer> element within <entry>

The product:manufacturer element contains information about the manufacturer of the product. This element allows products from different manufacturer to be included in the same feed.

3.1.1 <name> element within <product:manufacturer>

The name element contains the name of the manufacturer of the product.

3.1.2 <uri> element within <product:manufacturer>

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

3.2 <product:keywords> element within <entry>

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

3.3 <product:modelnumber> element within <entry>

The product:modelnumber element contains the model number for the product.

3.4 <product:partnumber> element within <entry>

The product:partnumber element contains the part number for the product.

3.5 <product:upc> element within <entry>

The product:upc element contains the Universal Product Code (UPC) or European Article Number (EAN) for the product.

3.6 <product:price> element within <entry>

The product:price element contains the price of the product. This field should contain only digits and the 3-letter code of the currency.

3.7 <product:pricecomments> element within <entry>

The product:pricecomments element contains further pricing details that do not fit the format above.

3.8 <product:image> element within <entry>

The product:image element contains a URL of an image representing this product.

3.9 <product:datasheetlink> element within <entry>

The product:datasheetlink element contains a URL of a data sheet file, that containts the marketing and technical details for buyers to review.

3.10 <product:manuallink> element within <entry>

The product:manuallink element contains a URL of an instruction manual for the product.

3.11 <product:phone> element within <entry>

The product:phone element contains a sales phone number to be associated with this product. The product:phone field is optional.

4 Example

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

<feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"
  xmlns:productf="http://www.mblast.com/products/0.1"
  xml:lang="en" xml:base="http://www.linksys.com">
  <id>http://www.linksys.com/feeds/products.atom</id>
  <title>Linksys Products Feed</title>
  <updated>2008-07-23T12:00:00Z</updated>
  <link rel="self" 
  href="http://www.linksys.com/feeds/products.xml" />
  <link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml"
    href="www.linksys.com/feeds/products.atom"/>
  <entry>
    <id>www.linksys.com
   /products/0,10801,109577,00.html</id>
    <title>WAP54G Wireles Router</title>
    <link href="http://www.linksys.com
   /products/0,10801,109577,00.html" />
    <updated>2008-07-22T12:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>Steven Stoddard</name>
    </author>
    <source>
      <name>Linksys>/name>
      <uri>http://www.linksys.com">/uri>
    </source>
    <summary>
      This router will enable you to quickly and
     easily upgrade any wired network with the
     latest wireless technologies.
    </summary>
    <link href="http://www.computerworld.com
	/story/0,10801,109577,00.pdf" />
    <product:manufacturer>
      <name>Linksys>/name>
      <uri>http://www.linksys.com">/uri>
    </product:manufacturer>
    <product:keywords>wireless, wi-fi, 802.11b,
     802.11g</product: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.