This document discusses using microformats with the eZ Publish content management system. It provides an overview of microformats like hCard for contacts and hCalendar for events. It describes how Brian Suda created an XSLT transformation (x2v) to convert hCalendar to iCalendar format. The document proposes using microformats by populating elements with attribute values from the microformat specifications. It notes challenges using the h2vx service to transform and subscribe due to robots.txt blocking, but provides the option to host the code locally to allow subscription.

1. Using
Microformats
with eZ Publish
eZ Partner Unconference - 02.06.2013
Duffy Walsh - leche.is

2. What are microformats?
● Simple, Human-readable, open
"Like the movement towards a semantic web
it's an attempt to do something with structured
data on the web better than what [is] already
out there."
http://microformats.org/

3. What are microformats?
There are a number of specifications and drafts:
Specifications
● hCard - contacts details
● hCalendar - events details
Drafts
● geo - locations details
● hRecipe - recipes details
http://microformats.org/wiki/Main_Page

4. How can Microformats
specifically be used with eZ
Publish?
Pave the cowpaths - "look where the paths are
already being formed by behavior and then
formalize them"
Create a format to fit current needs, widespread
applications
http://designingsocialinterfaces.com/patterns/Pave_the_Cowpaths

5. Our specific example:
Brian Suda created “a BETA implementation
of an XSLT file to transform hCalendar
encoded XHTML file into the corresponding
iCalendar file” - this is x2v
http://microformats.org/wiki/x2v
He has also created a cheat sheet of element
attributes / values
http://suda.co.uk/projects/microformats/cheatsheet/

6. A quick look
Saving you writing .ics format in the case of
hCalendar
http://microformats.org/wiki/hcalendar

7. More good news
There are also hosted solutions for the XSL
transformation working as a service. This use of
x2v is h2vx, which has services for hCard and
hCalendar stylesheets created by Tantek Çelik.
http://h2vx.com/
http://h2vx.com/ics/

8. eZ Publish Approach
We used a fullCalendar.js implementation and
some custom classes, but this only displayed
month by month at it's largest interval.
So nothing novel here, we used a blank layout
to output all events of a specific type, and
view_parameters to let easy know which
event types we were looking for.

9. eZ Publish Approach
So it’s as easy as:
● use easy to populate specific elements with
the cheat sheet-provided attributes and
values
● provide a link to submit your desired output
to an open source hosted transformation
service (perhaps h2vx)
● give your users some basic instructions on
how to subscribe via their preferred
calendar software

10. Not quite as easy as we
thought, but still easy :)
● h2vx robots.txt prevents subscription in
Google Reader, so subscription via gCal
does not work
● Fortunately, it's easy enough to grab a
copy of the project out of github, host it
and allow their reader

11. Questions and Thoughts
● Adverse effects of not blocking Google
crawlers
● A better solution than a blank layout