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.

Comments

Obligatory XKCD

[ttyler]

https://xkcd.com/927/

Bad reason

[mi]

eschewing the XML they rely on -- which is frequently malformed and difficult to parse

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.

Re:Bad reason

[bill_mcgonigle]

I agree, that JSON is easier to read than XML, but not easier enough to change the standard now.

Yeah, what is the _actual_ problem that RSS/Atom are causing now?

I've written several RSS/Atom readers and writers and never once did I worry about "how hard" XML is to parse. Heck, since like 2003 I've only ever use a popular language library to read/write those formats. Who needs to even parse the XML except the first person to write the library for a new language? I iterate over an object's member objects; I don't parse XML.

It seems like the real problem being solved here is that XML isn't "new hotness" like JSON is, not that anybody is having a problem parsing RSS/Atom feeds. Were we starting over today, sure, use JSON, but we're not.

Re:Bad reason

[KiloByte]

good libraries for reading and writing XML

Let's take a look at the most used one, and see how many pages of serious security vulnerabilities it has. Many of them allow arbitrary code execution...

There is no reason to have malformed XML in 2017.

FTFY: There is no reason to have XML in 2017.

Re:Bad reason

[HornWumpus]

JSON is just XML from the Java ecosystem. Feature for feature...

Whoever made the decision to 'do it yet again' needs to be taken out and kicked square in the balls by every coder that has to waste time on this bullshit.

Obvious solution

[mwvdlee]

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.

Oh FFS

[ilsaloving]

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.

I annonce new formats...

[grumpy-cowboy]

YAML Feed
INI Feed
CSV Feed
PROTOBUF Feed
THRIFT Feed
TSV Feed
TXT Feed
{NEW TRENDY FORMAT} Feed

Podcasts would be the adoption moment I think.

[thewolfkin]

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.

Re:Harder to malform the JSON

[gnunick]

The only coders using JSON now are java coders. They made a mistake selecting their flat file, hierarchical data format. Should have just build a good XML library in java to start.

Point of order: I've read several messages in this thread where you misassociate JSON with Java, but JSON didn't come from Java.

Its source is right there in the name: Javascript Object Notation.

Now on to subjective matters: XML is a disgusting standard which should die a fiery death. And I say this as someone who works with XML on a daily basis (but more and more JSON these days, thankfully). The fact that good libraries exist to work with it doesn't make it any more palatable to me. JSON is vastly simpler, maps easily to the most common data types, and is (get this...) usually easy (for humans) to read.

Java and XML were stuck together at an early age, and their forced marriage was unfortunately very fecund... but even many Java developers have seen fit to move on, if they're lucky enough to have the chance.