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JSON Feed Announced As Alternative To RSS (jsonfeed.org)
Reader Anubis IV writes: With Slashdot recently asking whether we still use RSS, it may come as a surprise that something interesting has happened in the world of news feeds this week. JSON Feed was launched as an alternative to RSS and Atom, eschewing the XML they rely on -- which is frequently malformed and difficult to parse -- in favor of a human readable JSON format that reflects the decades of combined experience its authors have in the field. The JSON Feed spec is a simple read that lays out a number of pragmatic benefits the format has over RSS and Atom, such as eliminating duplicate entries, adding the ability to paginate feeds so that old entries remain available, and reducing the need for clients to scrape sites to find images and other resources. Given that it's authored by the developers behind one of the earliest, popular RSS clients and a recently Kickstarted blogging platform, the format is intended to address the common pain points currently faced by developers when producing and parsing feeds.
While it remains to be seen whether JSON Feed will escape the chicken-and-egg stage of adoption, several clients have already added support for the fledging format in the week since its announcement, including Feedbin, Inoreader, and NewsBlur.
While it remains to be seen whether JSON Feed will escape the chicken-and-egg stage of adoption, several clients have already added support for the fledging format in the week since its announcement, including Feedbin, Inoreader, and NewsBlur.
https://xkcd.com/927/
People making mistakes implementing a spec is not in itself a good reason to drop it. There will be malformed JSON, that's to be sure. Do you escape slashes? Are true and false quoted? How long can a number be? Do the numbers use decimal dot or decimal comma — or does it depend on the locale? And, in the latter case, the server's locale or the client's?
I agree, that JSON is easier to read than XML, but not easier enough to change the standard now.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Why are people crowdfunding blogging platforms?
Problem: XML is harder to write than JSON.
Proposed solution A: Invent an entirely new format based on JSON and have the entire world adopt it.
Proposed solution B: Write a small library that translates JSON to XML and just use any of the dozens of libraries that already exists to parse RSS feeds.
Let's go for solution A.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Only in Slashdot! Is this something to be proud or ashamed of? LOL
I developed a small application to check some sites regularly and discovered that there are quite a few posting lots of information which don't have any (RSS) feeds. I also found the feeds in some of them either horribly formatted or with faulty/delayed data?! Most of nowadays websites are dynamically generated and adding just one tiny layer of automation seems pretty straightforward, how can be this possible?
Regarding the JSON format, I honestly don't care. Once you have the generation/retrieval algorithm, dealing with one or other format is very easy. All what I want is having something in place at all!
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
I like XML too. But only because I had to write an XML parser from scratch in Java as my final project before graduating from college. That level of detail tends to stick in your head.
What about IPv6?
Question I have about JSON: will I be able to stage those feeds from my bookmarks bar under anything - FireFox, Chrome/Chromium or Edge?
I haven't used RSS in a long time. I previously used Thunderbird to manage my RSS feeds. Are there any good RSS clients that also accept JSON feeds?
I remember when XML was the big thing and everyone was all, "Oooh oooh! Our solution will be so much better if we USE XML!!!11!eleventy"
I also remember then, how stupid this idea was, because there was nothing intrinsic about XML that would improve anything. Sure, XML is a human-readable file format that could be validated against a schema file if you so chose, and that was pretty good, but claiming a file/data format will improve how something functions, is like saying a car will perform better if you put the gas tank on the right side instead of the left.
And here we go, full circle again, except now everyone is ejaculating all over JSON, whose only benefit to XML is that it's slightly less verbose. It has none of the rigour that XML has, but everyone thinks it's great cause it's new and cool, and XML sucks because it's "old".
At least with XML, you can say enforceably say whether the piece of data is malformed or not. With JSON, the best you can do is basic syntax checking. There is no way to enforce the data itself is what it should be.... you have to trust that the other party didn't screw up the contents. The only way to add enforceability is reinvent the wheel in the worst way, by writing your own reference function to validate the data and hope other people use it.
People who don't want to always have to put things down, reach for a cell phone used as a pocket watch, and turn it around if upside down. Cyclists, for one.
And frankly, there are libraries to correctly build & sanitize the contents of both XML and json, so there is no excuse for that
Other than trying to interoperate with existing sites' incomplete or invalid feeds while avoiding copylefted code.
RSS worked fine, the problem is it was too open. Publishers want you logged in and monetized, with a reader that will display ads, and subscribing through a smart phone app.
I propose we improve this by using human readable text files for feeds. Just straight old readable text.
Something like YAML, a more "human-readable" serialization intended to fill some of JSON's niche?
People making mistakes implementing a spec is not in itself a good reason to drop it.
It is when the mistakes are frequent enough, obviously implementing RSS feeds is rather hard and most sites are really poor at it.
Adding to that is the simple fact that very few server languages have really easy or good XML generation at this point, compared to JSON library support. There are lots more good JSON libraries around and people are more comfortable with them and used to how they work.
There will be malformed JSON, that's to be sure.
Why, when most JSON will be produced by a library that simply maps something out to JSON? Also it's super easy to check JSON validity. If you ask 100 developers today to produce a defined output in JSON and XML, which do you think will have a much higher percentage chance of being correct?
Do you escape slashes? Are true and false quoted? How long can a number be? Do the numbers use decimal dot or decimal comma â" or does it depend on the locale?
Why do you think any of that matters? If the JSON is valid it is valid. Everyone on earth and most libraries are used to accommodating JSON that may have true or false either as boolean values or as strings for example. It simply doesn't matter.
I agree, that JSON is easier to read than XML, but not easier enough
It's WAY easier to generate in a world of developers that uses mostly JSON now and hardly touches XML. That alone is a HUGE reason to switch. Why saddle every website on earth with legacy crap? It's probably a big part of the reason RSS is not as common anymore, and the real crime would be if most sites had nothing like RSS at all...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I guess some sites don't want to appear in feed readers. Instead, they want the user to check back on the site's front page (and look at front-page ads) or to download and install the site's associated app for Apple iOS or Android with Google Play (and look at the app's ads, which are even harder to block without rooting).
Or the RSS feed might be delayed on purpose to discourage too-rapid polling. Slashdot, for instance, is known to ban IPs that retrieve its feed too often.
YAML Feed
INI Feed
CSV Feed
PROTOBUF Feed
THRIFT Feed
TSV Feed
TXT Feed
{NEW TRENDY FORMAT} Feed
Will $CURRENT_YEAR be the year of the Linux Desktop?
There's no such thing as malformed JSON. It is either JSON or it is some garbled hot mess that needs hacky shit to parse.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
I've read over the years that JSON data size is smaller? Also read that gzip negates this transparently.
XML will still compress smaller than JSON because gzip still has to emit back-references for the end tags. It's similar to how minified JS compresses smaller than unminified JS.
Change "XML will still compress smaller than JSON" to "XML will still compress slightly larger than JSON".
In the early 2000s Creimer got a free education.
I had a $3K tax credit. I spent my own money on school and got reimbursed on my tax refund. Did that for five years while taking two classes per semester. The three all-day Saturday ceramics classes I took during that time I paid out of my own pocket.
He's a scumbag, nah I'm just kidding, he's a great person.
Still jealous that the dean recommended me for the president's list because I maintained a 4.0GPA in my major? Shame, brother, shame. ;)
Since the death of Google Reader my most used case of RSS is podcasts. I get the occasional feed notification from IFTTT but most of the websites I used to get RSS from just have direct channels that are a little better and a little easier.
But podcasts however I listen to a fair number of podcasts and I have about 30-40 of them in my reader (Podcast Addict). I'd like a readable JSON format for syndication but if it's going to mess with my podcasts I won't bother.
Just another second banana
You seriously need to stop replying to this.
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
RSS is dead and replaced by Twitter. Of course, I use RSS, but RSS is too nerd for the average user.
Spoke like someone who has never read the XML spec. If it correctly handled XML namespaces, I'd be happy with it as an undergraduate project. It's trivial to write something that will handle 90% of valid XML. The remaining 10% is really hard!
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
RSS worked fine, the problem is it was too open. Publishers want you logged in and monetized, with a reader that will display ads, and subscribing through a smart phone app.
Man I remember the good old Google Reader days RSS feeds were so well populated that I didn't bother going to websites anymore. RSS feeds had everything I wanted. But yeah those glory days feel like they're gone now. I haven't made the switch to feedly yet and this point I'm not sure I'm going to bother with it.
Just another second banana
The only coders using JSON now are java coders.
What about every web or server developer on Earth? Are you not aware that the entire industry has moved to JSON for client to server transmission? ALL of the server people I have worked with in the last decade now have preferred JSON for REST web service calls too. That includes Ruby servers, PHP servers, not just Java stuff. In fact REST was pretty much using JSON from day one except for a few crazy attempts to use XML instead.
The entire iOS development community uses JSON rather heavily also (mostly because of REST calls but also for other purposes)...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You seriously need to stop replying to this.
The alternative is to listen to my co-workers on the all-day conference call talk about storming medieval castles in Germany. It's a slow week as Memorial Day weekend is coming up, everyone who is important is on vacation, and this month's scan data is nowhere to be seen.
Because when I take my watch off, I look at my bear wrist for the time all time time. That gets annoying, so I put on a watch! A watch is always on my body, a phone isn't.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
But in reality, a watch is quite impractical because the time gets all blurry from the motion of your wrist when you masturbate.
#DeleteFacebook
Otherwise we get "web monkeys" who load jQuery before writing a single HTML tag for a text-only, non-interractive page that displays a simple "Hello world" sentence.
#DeleteFacebook
But in reality, a watch is quite impractical because the time gets all blurry from the motion of your wrist when you masturbate.
Yes, and a watch is very important during those times because you have to keep an eye on you watch to make sure you don't go beyond 4 hrs.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
You don't own a real Rolex?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
They're all tourist traps. The beer is cheaper, further away from the castles. Storm a beer garden instead.
Stay away from Oktoberfest. It's just an insane ripoff in the tents.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Otherwise we get "web monkeys" who load jQuery before writing a single HTML tag [...]
How do you load jQuery without writing a script tag?
https://www.w3schools.com/jquery/jquery_get_started.asp
It's no surprise that anyone would consider re-inventing the wheel or fixing what isn't broken because you can exchange the unnecessary labor for money. Brilliant!
We'll make great pets
This new standard will only cause confusion.
The big parties like Google are already trying to rid the world of RSS, or relegate it to a niche, since there is no advertising money in it.
There is all kinds of things wrong with XML, but not in the context or RSS Feeds. The format is simple, easy to create and easy to read. Adding a new standard will not make RSS Feeds suddenly popular, quite the opposite.
Let's unite behind RSS and the XML format.
Well, don't worry about that. We can get you back before you leave. (Dr. Who)
They're all tourist traps. The beer is cheaper, further away from the castles. Storm a beer garden instead.
I don't think they had beer gardens back in medieval times.
If you're going to storm castles, you need one of these for the tabletop game.
http://www.apptivus.com/store/pennypult-toy-trebuchet-kit
The data format isn't the problem. It's that the current web industry does not promote decentralized content distribution when it cannot be used to distribute advertisements and collect consumer metrics.
iCalendar is a custom property list format (SOMETHING:VALUE) and there is no real need to replace it either. As the problems aren't the format, but in how applications choose to use, distribute, and interoperate.
The problem lies way way above the software. It's with people, the businesses and users.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Yes because everybody knows he could have used a regular expression.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
What is XML even used for? Seriously, wasn't it supposed to overtake HTML at one point? Who uses it and for what purpose?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Ah yes, a Viagra joke, implying that I am old and need such a thing. Well played.
#DeleteFacebook
Yes because everybody knows he could have used a regular expression.
I don't recall using regex for my XML parser in Java. If I did, I would probably have gotten a book on regex (which I don't have). I did have a brief exposure to regex in my Linux administration classes. Never took Perl because the class got cancelled for not enough students. These days I used regex with Beautiful Soup to parse Slashdot comments in my Python script.
On second thought... we need a version that uses protocol buffers.. this would make RSS even better. You'll never know it or care but it'll be better...trust the Internet... more fragmentation for semantic bullshits sake is good for everyone.
Tell me it's a joke.
I can read XMLs - no problem, most JSONs on the internet have no new lines at all, thank you very much.
ISIT
For a while, all the cool people stopped wearing them, looking at you like a hopelessy out of touch dinosaur if you kept a watch. Then very quickly that reversed itself, now all the cool people and hipsters wear smart watches, Fitbits that tell time, and other time telling devices worn on the wrist. AND normal old fashioned analog watches are appearing on peopel's wrists.
The lack of wrist watches was one of the shortest lived fashion trends that I can remember.
It's a lot easier to parse a feed into a series of articles if each article entry has something in it that gives a natural ordering.
It's a lot easier to display an integrated collection of feeds if articles have a natural ordering relative to each other.
It was a problem that RSS didn't make publication date mandatory. JSON Feed doesn't solve this problem.
I don't think even the editors could blame RSS for the dupes.
SEXP > XML > JSON
Ezekiel 23:20
I just thought it was funny how they implied JSON was somehow more human-readable and less prone to parsing errors, as though they hadn't actually ever tried doing this with XML to see.
It's a good remark. Quoting a paper on that matter, "the essence of XML is this: the problem it solves is not hard, and it does not solve the problem well."
Ezekiel 23:20
What is XML even used for?
We use it a lot for data exchange with various other systems. Most systems we talk to have moved away from fixed-width, comma-separated or EDIFACT files to XML.
Of course, frequently the XML files we get has clearly been generated by a bunch of printf()'s with all the specification-breaking stuff that can lead to. Still, it's nicer to work with than fixed-width or comma-separated files, and easier for humans to read and manipulate than EDIFACT.
I like XML too. But only because I had to write an XML parser from scratch in Java as my final project before graduating from college. That level of detail tends to stick in your head.
XML Parser as a graduation project? I wrote one in ANSI-C hosted over a drunken weekend during my third divorce. I believe it's still used on some backend BSD system somewhere.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Yes because everybody knows he could have used a regular expression.
I don't recall using regex for my XML parser in Java.
I don't think you can. XML is not a regular language.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Ah, that explains the long paws.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Lets make this clear for everyone
XML == W3C Standard and is based on SGML as is HTML
JSON != W3C Standard
Both can easily be cocked up by improper implementations
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
How the fuck do you VALIDATE that fucking stream of nonsense though?
Validation is highly overrated, I did a LOT of XML work back the day and validation was NEVER used in live systems.
In the end what validation was actually used for was simply a reference document describing what the XML would hold. But you can easily produce the same kind of document for any JSON structure, so that you developers know what to expect in the payload.
Once you have it all working, why do you need validation for a running system? What is the difference between a validation error and a parser error somewhere in the middle unwinding JSON in the way you are expecting?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley