iptc news in json spring 2013

News in JSON

Stuart Myles * Associated Press * 11th March 2013

News in JSON Activity

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jondresner/5789254800/

News In JSON Activity


News in JSON Activity


News In JSON Activity


Determine the priority properties to be expressedBy examining G2, rNews, NITF and existing implementations

Created 2-3 candidate JSON representations

Places

Subjects

Text markup

Wrote experimental code

to try out the candidate structures

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" }]}

© 2013 IPTC (www.iptc.org) All rights reserved 4

http://json.org/

http://json.org/

Things We Considered But Decided Against

• Translating from an existing XML standard into JSON– Not all IPTC standards are XML– Not all publishers use the same IPTC standards– Not all publishers use any IPTC standards

• “Mechanically” translating from XML into JSON– There are many libraries that can do this– Different choices for how to represent certain XML features– So each technique results in a slightly different JSON– We felt that more a more “natural” JSON would be more

valuable


News in JSON Properties

• We reviewed existing sets of news properties including– NewsML-G2– NewsML 1– rNews– NITF

• We selected a set of priority properties to represent• https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AvnUbL

xJqDwBdGxOQXdYeTRPM2k3WFhiNGRuMWR2M1E

• We could add more later...• ...but we wanted to start somewhere


https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AvnUbLxJqDwBdGxOQXdYeTRPM2k3WFhiNGRuMWR2M1E

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AvnUbLxJqDwBdGxOQXdYeTRPM2k3WFhiNGRuMWR2M1E


Let’s draft a News in JSON white paper!

Representing Places in JSON

Geographic metadata such as• Display Name: Brooklyn (NYC)• ID: http://id.example.org/5110302• Centroid: 40.6501038, -73.9495823• Bounding Box: 40.453216826620995, -73.68930777156369,

40.846990773379, 1.0, -74.20985682843632• Hierarchy: Kings County > New York > NY > USA• Type: Second order administrative division

Several non publishing JSON implementations, such as• GeoJSON http://www.geojson.org/• Geonames API http://

www.geonames.org/export/JSON-webservices.html


http://id.example.org/5110302

http://www.geojson.org/

http://www.geonames.org/export/JSON-webservices.html

http://www.geonames.org/export/JSON-webservices.html

Two Ways to Represent Places

Approach #1: The geonames wayhttp://api.geonames.org/getJSON?geonameId=5110302&username=kansandhaus&format=json

Approach #2: With a bit more structurehttps://gist.github.com/jays0n/5032774

We wrote some code to test them outThe app selects a few fields and prints out the objects created

Note the different nesting that these caused when looking at the two BO classes.

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/iptc-news-in-json-dev/files/jayson-json-geo-tests.tar.gz


http://api.geonames.org/getJSON?geonameId=5110302&username=kansandhaus&format=json




https://gist.github.com/jays0n/5032774

https://gist.github.com/jays0n/5032774





What We Learnt

• Simpler JSON results in simpler code– Avoid arrays if they will normally only contain a single object

• Ensure property labels start with lower case letters– Some parsers (e.g. Jackson) assume this convention

• The main conclusion: there wasn’t much to choose between the two styles in practice

• Proposal: adopt the slightly more structured approach


Some Useful Tools

• http://jsonlint.com/– helpful for finding syntax errors

• http://jackson.codehaus.org/– nice JSON support in JAVA

• http://goessner.net/articles/JsonPath/– like XPATH for JSON


http://jsonlint.com/

http://jsonlint.com/

http://jackson.codehaus.org/

http://jackson.codehaus.org/

http://goessner.net/articles/JsonPath/

http://goessner.net/articles/JsonPath/

Subjects in JSON

• Subjects– People, companies, organizations, abstract concepts– Keywords, categories

• A single structure for all– Like NITF http://

www.iptc.org/std/NITF/3.6/documentation/nitf-3-6.html#Link19– For example https://gist.github.com/kansandhaus/5049159

• Each subject type has its own structure– For example https://gist.github.com/anonymous/5049220


http://www.iptc.org/std/NITF/3.6/documentation/nitf-3-6.html#Link19

http://www.iptc.org/std/NITF/3.6/documentation/nitf-3-6.html#Link19

https://gist.github.com/kansandhaus/5049159



https://gist.github.com/anonymous/5049220



Subjects in JSON• A single structure leaves no room for error in selecting

the “bucket” to use to represent a given concept• However, the code to access these anonymous buckets

is much more complex• To select documents which are marked as having a

location=San Francisco in MongoDB– mnc.queryDB("{\"keywords\" : {\"$elemMatch\" :

{\"type\" : \"location\", \"name\" : \"San Francisco (CA)\"}}}"); – mnc.queryDB("{ locations.name: 'San Francisco (SF)' }");

• Proposal: Adopt the “specific buckets” structure


http://locations.name/

Text Markup in JSON

• How to represent richly marked up text in JSON?• A sweet spot for document-oriented XML• Could be HTML, XHTML, NITF ...

• We experiment with two existing text markup examples• NITF:

http://www.iptc.org/std/NITF/3.2/examples/nitf-fishing.xml• HTML:

http://dev.iptc.org/Implementation-Guide-HTML-5-Microdata-in-IPTC-namespace


http://www.iptc.org/std/NITF/3.2/examples/nitf-fishing.xml



Text Markup Options in JSON

• Plain text, stripped of markup• Preserved but escaped markup

– HTML: https://gist.github.com/anonymous/4996653– XML: https://gist.github.com/anonymous/4996676– See http://

stackoverflow.com/questions/993970/what-do-i-need-to-escape-in-my-html-json-response for a discussion of how to escape markup in JSON

• Mechanically create JSON structures to mimic the original markup– We used JSONML as an example http://www.jsonml.org/– NITF : https://gist.github.com/anonymous/4996697– HTML: https://gist.github.com/anonymous/4996720





http://stackoverflow.com/questions/993970/what-do-i-need-to-escape-in-my-html-json-response



http://www.jsonml.org/

http://www.jsonml.org/



What We Learnt

• Both plain text (no markup) and escaped markup have clear use cases– Plain text can be useful for search, for example– Escaped markup works well for direct display on a webpage

• Markup translated (like JSONML) works OK if you have a library to implement the rules– But what is the added benefit beyond just working directly with

XML or HTML?– Who will write and maintain the libraries for ever language?

• Proposal: Let providers use both plain and escaped text


News in JSON Road Map

• Evaluate more structures– Such as links to binaries

• Write a white paper on our initial recommendations– Publish and seek out feedback within IPTC and beyond

• Create a News in JSON 1.0 recommendation– Present it for a vote at the Paris meeting– Consider an experimental phase

• You can help by joining the News in JSON group– [email protected]


mailto:[email protected]

Date and Place of Next Meeting

Paris 24 - 26 June, 2013

http://www.flickr.com/photos/anirudhkoul/3536413126/

Dank en tot ziens!


iptc news in json spring 2013

Documents