Standardizing the representation of news in JSON

1. News in JSON
Stuart Myles * Associated Press * 25th June 2013
http://www.flickr.com/photos/anirudhkoul/3536413126/

2. Remind Me: What is JSON?
JSON = JavaScript Object Notation http://json.org/
Name / value pairs: a fieldname in quotes, a colon, a value in quotes
"givenname" : "Stuart"
Objects: written inside curly braces, may contain multiple NVPs
{"givenname" : "Stuart", "familyname" : "Myles"}
Arrays: Written inside square braces, may contain multiple objects
{"iptcdelegates": [
{
"givenname": "Dave", "familyname": "Compton"},
{
"givenname": "Stuart", "familyname": "Myles"},
{
"givenname": "Robert", "familyname": "Schmidt-Nia"
}
]}
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3. Remind Me: Why News in JSON?
Lightweight, easy to parse format
Increasingly popular alternative to / replacement for XML
Two principle use cases:
data interchange (e.g. APIs) with more emphasis on partial
representation
data at rest (e.g. search engines like Elastic Search or MongoDB)
Not simply translating from an existing XML standard into JSON
Determine how to represent key properties and structures
Hand crafted, rather than mechanically translating from XML into JSON
Goal: comprehensive standard, lightweight instance documents
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4. News in JSON Activity
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jondresner/5789254800/
News In JSON Activity
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jondresner/5789254800/

5. News in JSON Activity
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jondresner/5789254800/
News In JSON Activity
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jondresner/5789254800/
NINJA
NINJS

6. NINJS Overview
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7. NINJS Data Model
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8. NINJS Highlight #1
Descriptive Metadata
Same basic structure
but differing properties per type and preference
"place" : [{
"name" : "New York City",
"name@ru" : "Нью-Йорк",
"why" : "direct",
"how" : "extracted",
"rel" : "about",
"scheme" : "http://data.example.com/",
"code" : "N46020133052049607171"
}],
"subject" : [{
"name": "Data-Mining & Database Marketing",
"rel" : "about"}]
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9. NINJS Highlight #2
Text Markup
A single object with a property per text markup type
"body" : {
"text": "It was a case for a digital
Sherlock Holmes.",
"html": "<b>It was a case for a digital
Sherlock Holmes.",
"iptc7901" : "It was a case for a digital
Sherlock Holmes.u201d",
"nitf": "<p>It was a case for a digital
Sherlock Holmes.</p>",
"xhtml": "<p>It was a case for a digital
Sherlock Holmes.</p>"
}
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10. NINJS Highlight #3
Associations and Representations
• NINJS is a JSON representation of a news item
• You can represent a complete item, with all properties
– For instance in an internal CMS like MongoDB
• Or you may want to convey key properties
– For instance as an API response
• The representationtype property indicates how complete
• Associations are themselves NINJS documents
– You may include complete or partial representations
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11. JSON-LD
• JSON for Linked Data
• A W3C effort to add conventions to JSON documents to
support Linked Data concepts, currently in last call
• http://www.w3.org/TR/json-ld/
• Do we want to adopt any of the JSON-LD conventions
for NINJS?
• Or would it create too much of a burden for clients?
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12. NINJS Spec
• Reference document
– https://www.stypi.com/Td4K2niLwPJRbIM697EYTtEO
• Working document
– https://www.stypi.com/pZxwJ2pADLcb77Vw64gfn9HA
• JSON Schema
– http://json-schema.org/
– Not entirely real but better than inventing our own
– https://www.stypi.com/D7GbLXJUugfrLOlDezCr49jt
• How strict?
– Balance between flexibility and interoperability
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13. News in JSON Road Map
• Complete the initial draft
• Review property names
• Experiment with implementations
• Create a NINJS 1.0 recommendation
– Present it for a vote at the Washington, DC meeting
– Consider an experimental phase
• You can help by joining the News in JSON group
– iptc-news-in-json-dev@yahoogroups.com
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14. Date and Place of Next Meeting
Washington, DC 21 - 23 October, 2013
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pcscheid/4351707431/
Merci et à bientôt!
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