This document describes a JSON serialization format to describe simple streams of data as well as single objects of data for data transfer and processing.
JF2 is a JSON based document format that describes single entries of information and lists of those entries. The primary use case for JF2 is to create a JSON format for social web post objects to be processed directly by client software and by other servers.
JF2 is vocabulary independent except for its profiles which are fully vocabulary aware. Rather than defining a new vocabulary the profiles described in this document use the vocabulary defined by [[microformats2]] (MF2); however, any other suitable vocabulary could be used. The name JF2 comes from its origins in being a direct parsed format of microformats2 data from HTML.
JF2 has evolved as a result of a variety of use-cases for different implementations exploring ways to simplify their existing use of canonical parsed microformats2 JSON output. All of these use cases in particular are simply to have a single format for the storage and use of social web objects.
Webmention.io is a service that provides Webmention processing and verification on behalf of other sites. It uses a simple JSON object to transfer a processed Webmention back to the client site's JavaScript for display. The attributes are intended to be processed only by the client site's JavaScript code, not by anything else.
mf2util is a utility library that provides a layer on top of microformats processing. The library returns only a simple JSON object and strips off any unnecessary information leaving the library user only the most essential information.
Various services (XRay, Unmung, SocialStreams) provide conversion from microformats pages into JF2 for quick inspection to validate proper semantics. These tools have been used in practice to allow for embedded social activity in a page.
Conforming documents are those that comply with all the conformance criteria for JF2 documents. For readability, some of these conformance requirements are phrased as conformance requirements on publishers. Such requirements are implicitly requirements on documents: by definition, all documents are assumed to have a publisher.
Conforming documents must not use features of JSON-LD or other serialization features disallowed in this specification. Conforming documents that include types or properties beyond those defined in [[microformats2]] must use [[microformats2]]'s prefixing methods to indicate non-standard properties.
A non-exhaustive list of examples of documents includes:
Conforming implementations are software that publish, store, analyze, consume or otherwise process conforming documents. The two main kinds of implementations are publishers and consumers.
Conforming publishers are implementations that create and publish conforming documents. Conforming publishers must make conforming documents available according to the serialization requirements of this document. Conforming publishers must consider privacy as described in the Privacy section of this document. Conforming publishers must consider security as described in the Security Considerations section of this document.
A non-exhaustive list of example publishers includes:
Conforming consumers are implementations that read and analyze conforming documents. Conforming consumers must not halt on any unrecognized properties or types.
Conforming consumers may re-publish conforming documents in other other data formats. Conforming consumers may present conforming documents to a user on screen, in print, in audio format, or using other presentation mechanisms. Conforming consumers must faithfully translate the information represented in conforming documents into these other formats or media. Conforming consumers that re-publish conforming documents must consider privacy and security as described in the Privacy section and Security Considerations section of this document.
A non-exhaustive list of example consumers includes:
A validator for conforming documents is available at https://jf2.rocks/. This also offers example conforming and non-conforming documents for testing purposes.
Please submit your implementation reports at https://jf2.rocks/. Instructions are provided at the URL.
JF2 consists of JSON objects which are defined by a type property that will specify the vocabulary of the object. Properties are attached to these objects which will contain either a single string, a single object, an array of strings, or an array of objects. Arrays that have only a single item SHOULD be condensed into only the single containing item. Any property of an object MAY be a single item or an array of items except for reserved properties defined below.
The following properties are reserved and cannot be used as property names in vocabularies.
A post is composed of a "type" property, and one or more additional properties that describe the post.
The "type" property has a value that describes the vocabulary of the post. Common values include "entry", "card", etc. See microformats2 vocabularies for the full list when using a microformats based vocabulary.
Any additional properties in the post object are considered part of the post's vocabulary.
The list of valid post properties is defined by the vocabularies. This allows new vocabularies to be developed outside the development of the syntax.
Most values will be strings. If a property (such as "author" for example) references another object, it may be serialized in two ways: as an inline JSON object or as the unique identifier or [[!URL]] where the object can be found. See Using References.
Values MAY also be arrays if the vocabulary allows for multiple values of the property.
{
"type": "entry",
"published": "2015-10-20T15:49:00-0700",
"url": "https://example.com/post/fsjeuu8372",
"author": {
"type": "card",
"name": "Alice",
"url": "https://alice.example.com",
"photo": "https://alice.example.com/photo.jpg"
},
"name": "Hello World",
"content": "This is a blog post",
"category": "Posts"
}
{
"type": "entry",
"published": "2015-10-20T15:49:00-0700",
"url": "https://example.com/like/r23eugi02c",
"author": {
"type": "card",
"name": "Alice",
"url": "https://alice.example.com",
"photo": "https://alice.example.com/photo.jpg"
},
"like-of": "https://bob.example.com/post/100",
"category": ["Likes", "Posts"]
}
By default, any string value should be interpreted as literal plaintext. This means when displaying a string in an HTML page, it must be HTML escaped.
If the value of a property is to be interpreted as HTML, it MUST be enclosed in an object and placed under the "html" property as follows. If a plaintext version is also available, that is placed under the "text" property.
{
"type": "entry",
"content": {
"html": "<p>Hello World</p>",
"text": "Hello World"
}
}
Since HTML video/audio/picture tags may have multiple URLs, we need a way to convey this information in the JSON representation. In such situations, vocabulary properties MAY be arrays.
For example, this HTML (marked up with microformats2):
<div class="h-entry">
<video class="u-video" width="640" height="360" preload controls>
<source src="sample_h264.mov" type='video/mp4; codecs="avc1.42E01E, mp4a.40.2"' />
<source src="sample_ogg.ogv" type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"' />
<source src="sample_webm.webm" type='video/webm; codecs="vp8, vorbis"' />
</video>
</div>
could be represented with this JSON:
{
"type": "entry",
"video": [
{
"content-type": "video/mp4",
"url": "sample_h264.mov"
},
{
"content-type": "video/ogg",
"url": "sample_ogg.ogg"
},
{
"content-type": "video/webm",
"url": "sample_webm.webm"
}
]
}
The purpose of the references property is to exclude any non-authoritative data from the defined object. To do this, non-authoritative data is moved so that implementations looking to process only authoritative data may simply ignore the references property and fetch any data that would be contained there from its authoritative source.
If a property is a reference to an object that is defined authoritatively in some other location, the references property SHOULD be used. The property SHOULD contain only the unique identifier or [[!URL]] where the authoritative data may be found. In the references object, the URL or unique identifier MAY be used as the property key and a serialization of the referenced object MAY be provided as the property value. This serialization of the referenced object MAY be incomplete so as to provide only necessary data.
Parsing implementations SHOULD fetch data from the authoritative source instead of using the references object.
{
"type": "entry",
"published": "2015-10-20T15:49:00-0700",
"url": "https://example.com/post/fsjeuu8372",
"author": "https://alice.example.com",
"name": "Hello World",
"content": "This is a blog post",
"category": "Posts",
"references": {
"https://alice.example.com": {
"type": "card",
"name": "Alice",
"url": "https://alice.example.com",
"photo": "https://alice.example.com/photo.jpg"
}
}
}
{
"type": "entry",
"published": "2015-10-20T15:49:00-0700",
"url": "https://example.com/like/r23eugi02c",
"author": {
"type": "card",
"name": "Alice",
"url": "https://alice.example.com",
"photo": "https://alice.example.com/photo.jpg"
},
"like-of": "https://bob.example.com/post/100",
"category": ["Likes", "Posts"],
"references": {
"https://bob.example.com/post/100": {
"type": "entry",
"published": "2015-10-18T12:33:00-0700",
"url": "https://bob.example.com/post/100",
"author": "https://bob.example.com",
"name": "My First Post",
"content": "This is my first post on my new blog, I hope you like it"
},
"https://bob.example.com": {
"type": "card",
"name": "Bob",
"url": "https://bob.example.com",
"photo": "https://bob.example.com/mypicture.jpg"
}
}
}
Posts can be contained inside of collections. A collection may be a home page feed, or a feed of other posts such as a list of contacts, a list of things someone has liked, etc. There is no requirement that all posts in a collection need to be of the same type.
The collection may also have its own properties such as "name" or "author".
{
"type": "feed",
"url": "https://alice.example.com/collectionurl",
"name": "Alice's Home Page",
"author": {
"type": "card",
"name": "Alice",
"url": "https://alice.example.com",
"photo": "https://alice.example.com/photo"
},
"children": [
{
"type": "entry",
"content": {
"html": "Hello World
",
"text": "Hello World"
}
},
{
"type": "entry",
"content": {
"html": "A Second Post
",
"text": "A Second Post"
}
}
]
}
If an HTML page contains multiple top-level items, (most commonly found when a page contains a list of [[h-entry]] objects), the parser creates an implicit top-level collection with no properties.
{
"children": [
{
"type": "entry",
"content": {
"html": "Hello World
",
"text": "Hello World"
}
},
{
"type": "entry",
"content": {
"html": "A Second Post
",
"text": "A Second Post"
}
}
]
}
This syntax is derived from HTML with microformats2 converted to JSON with [[!microformats2-parsing]], then converted to a simplified JSON. The examples below illustrate the process.
<article class="h-entry">
<h1 class="p-name">Hello World</h1>
<p>Published by <a class="p-author h-card" href="https://example.com/">A. Developer</a>
on <a href="https://example.com/2015/10/21" class="u-url"><time class="dt-published" datetime="2015-10-21T12:00:00-0700">October 21<sup>st</sup>, 2015</time></a>
<p class="p-summary">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vivamus imperdiet ultrices pulvinar.</p>
<div class="e-content"><p>Donec dapibus enim lacus, <i>a vehicula magna bibendum non</i>. Phasellus id lacinia felis, vitae pellentesque enim. Sed at quam dui. Suspendisse accumsan, est id pulvinar consequat, urna ex tincidunt enim, nec sodales lectus nulla et augue. Cras venenatis vehicula molestie. Donec sagittis elit orci, sit amet egestas ex pharetra in.</p></div>
</article>
{
"items": [
{
"type": [
"h-entry"
],
"properties": {
"author": [
{
"type": [
"h-card"
],
"properties": {
"name": [
"A. Developer"
],
"url": [
"https://example.com/"
]
},
"value": "A. Developer"
}
],
"name": [
"Hello World"
],
"summary": [
"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vivamus imperdiet ultrices pulvinar."
],
"url": [
"https://example.com/2015/10/21"
],
"published": [
"2015-10-21T12:00:00-0700"
],
"content": [
{
"html": "<p>Donec dapibus enim lacus, <i>a vehicula magna bibendum non</i>. Phasellus id lacinia felis, vitae pellentesque enim. Sed at quam dui. Suspendisse accumsan, est id pulvinar consequat, urna ex tincidunt enim, nec sodales lectus nulla et augue. Cras venenatis vehicula molestie. Donec sagittis elit orci, sit amet egestas ex pharetra in.</p>",
"value": "Donec dapibus enim lacus, a vehicula magna bibendum non. Phasellus id lacinia felis, vitae pellentesque enim. Sed at quam dui. Suspendisse accumsan, est id pulvinar consequat, urna ex tincidunt enim, nec sodales lectus nulla et augue. Cras venenatis vehicula molestie. Donec sagittis elit orci, sit amet egestas ex pharetra in."
}
]
}
}
]
}
{
"type": "entry",
"author": {
"type": "card",
"url": "https://example.com",
"name": "A. Developer"
},
"url": "https://example.com/2015/10/21",
"published": "2015-10-21T12:00:00-0700",
"name": "Hello World",
"summary": "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vivamus imperdiet ultrices pulvinar.",
"content": {
"html": "<p>Donec dapibus enim lacus, <i>a vehicula magna bibendum non</i>. Phasellus id lacinia felis, vitae pellentesque enim. Sed at quam dui. Suspendisse accumsan, est id pulvinar consequat, urna ex tincidunt enim, nec sodales lectus nulla et augue. Cras venenatis vehicula molestie. Donec sagittis elit orci, sit amet egestas ex pharetra in.</p>",
"text": "Donec dapibus enim lacus, a vehicula magna bibendum non. Phasellus id lacinia felis, vitae pellentesque enim. Sed at quam dui. Suspendisse accumsan, est id pulvinar consequat, urna ex tincidunt enim, nec sodales lectus nulla et augue. Cras venenatis vehicula molestie. Donec sagittis elit orci, sit amet egestas ex pharetra in."
}
}
JF2 documents all have an implicit @context field which is optional. This @context can be found at https://www.w3.org/ns/jf2 and is provided only to make conversion to [[JSON-LD]] format possible. Most JF2 will process fine in JSON-LD systems, however, this support is not guaranteed and those wishing to use JF2 in JSON-LD may need to modify serialization slightly.
JF2 on its own is intentionally vocabulary independent, that is, any value may contain a single value, a set of values, or a structure and there are no requirements that fields be present. While this keeps the fidelity of the original [[microformats2]] encoded HTML, some consuming code can be simplified by adding vocabulary requirements. This creates the need for vocabulary aware profiles of JF2, where the profile adds additional constraints on the fields present.
XML formats have heavily dominated serializations of social activity feeds for blogs and news feeds for years. Several attempts have been created over the years to attempt to bring these to a JSON format, most recently [[jsonfeed-v1]], which JF2 Feed gets the majority of its requirements from. JF2 Feed is an attempt to bring some of the advantages of these vocabulary aware specifications under a standard vocabulary from [[microformats2]].
Fields described below have additional requirements to be considered a valid JF2 Feed, however they may contain any number of additional fields from [[h-feed]], [[h-entry]], and [[h-card]]. The fields below are codified as they are likely the most useful for feed readers; additional data is expected to be fetchable at the entry URL, preferably though valid [[microformats2]] markup.
The following fields have additional constraints to be a valid JF2 Feed that only apply to the top level feed object, its child entry object, and any properties of them.
The format of published and updated fields may change from [[ISO8601]] to [[RFC3339]] or use [[microformats2]]'s more liberal date field. Please discuss on github issues
The JF2 Feed for a page may be published as HTTP Link header [[!RFC5988]], or as an HTML <link> or <a> tag element with the following attributes.
rel="alternate" type="application/jf2feed+json" href="https://example.com/jf2feed.json"
{
"type": "feed",
"url": "https://example.org/myfeed.html",
"name": "Brent Simmons’s Microblog",
"author": {
"type": "card",
"name": "Brent Simmons",
"url": "https://example.org/",
"photo": "https://example.org/avatar.png"
},
"children": [
{
"type": "entry",
"uid": "https://example.org/2347259",
"url": "https://example.org/2347259",
"content": {
"text": "Cats are neat. \n\nhttps://example.org/cats"
},
"published": "2016-02-09T14:22:00-07:00"
}
]
}
As it is not sane to do this for every feed serialization currently available, this section is likely to only be temporary in the spec and may be moved to a more permanant home elsewhere.
JF2 Feed was based heavily on [[jsonfeed-v1]] and as such it is quite trivial to process a JSON Feed as a JF2 Feed with only minor changes. This section discusses the conversion that must be made for this process, most of which is simply conversion of properties to their [[microformats2]] equivalent.
Conversion of the top level structure
Conversion of the author property on the top level or on any lower level entry
Conversion of each entry in items
It may be benefitial to drop any properties other than those mentioned to avoid conflicts with any future [[microformats2]] properties.
JF2 MAY be extended by the [[!microformats2]] extension mechanism. The 'x-*' properties created in this way MAY be present in any serialization of JF2. Parsers MUST NOT halt on any unknown properties they encounter.
In order to allow any language to be serialized in JF2, the 'lang' value can be set on any object to annotate the natural language of the text. Many often ask for control structures like directionality of text and multiple language serializations. Directionality of text can be accomplished with UTF-8 control characters which can be added to any of the values in the document. In addition, any content inside of 'html' properties can have any markup as defined by [[!HTML5]].
Multiple serializations of the same text has not been seen to be needed in practice. The suggested path for accomplishing this with JF2 is to have these hosted at different locations. For example, it is common practice on websites to host an alternate language version of a site under a different directory structure for each language (such as /en/, /jp/, /fr/, etc).
As with any serialization format, JF2 streams can potentially contain private and personally identifiable information. As such, producing and consuming implementations SHOULD take a default stance that all information in these documents are private and take steps to ensure the privacy of their users. This can include transmission only over secure connections, limiting access to streams, deletion of stored secure information, or any other steps that would apply to any private information.
JF2 is not intended to contain executable code however, as JF2 allows arbitrary text it may be possible for publishers to craft text in an executable fashion. As such, JF2 documents should not be passed through any executable mechanism such as JavaScript's eval() function to be parsed. Processing of field contents should not execute any encountered code and it is recommended that any HTML formatted content be filtered to remove any executable code such as script and style tags.
JF2 documents may require privacy and integrity services depending on the document content and implementation concerns. If such services are required, they must be provided externally such as by the use of SSL/TLS connections to prevent forgery or exposure of data.
Any externally linked documents must be processed by their own format's security model. JF2 documents do not make any claims about the security of any externally referenced documents.
JF2 Streams are JSON Documents and are subject to the same security considerations described in [[!RFC7159]].
application/jf2feed+json Media Type
This specification registers the application/jf2feed+json MIME Media Type specifically for identifying documents
conforming to the JF2 format with the JF2 Feed profile.
| Type name: | application |
| Subtype name: | jf2feed+json |
| Required parameters: | None |
| Optional parameters: | None |
| Encoding considerations: | Binary, as per [[!RFC6839]], section 3.1; the charset parameter is not used and byte-order marks are not permitted, as per [[!RFC7159]], sections 11 and 8.1 |
| Security considerations: | See [[RFC7159]] section 12 and the Security Considerations section of this specification. |
| Contact: | Ben Roberts <ben@thatmustbe.me> |
This section lists changes from the 26 Oct 2017 WD to this version.
This section lists changes from the 19 July 2017 WD to 26 Oct 2017 WD.
This section lists changes from the 27 June 2017 WD to 19 July 2017 WD.
This section lists changes from the 12 June 2017 WD to 27 June 2017 WD.
This section lists changes from the 28 July 2016 FPWD to 12 June 2017 WD
The authors wish to thank the Microformats, IndieWeb, Pump.io, and Activity Streams communities for their continued work in building the social web and helping define standards such as this one. This includes, but is certainly not limited to, Aaron Parecki, AJ Jordan, Benjamin Goering, Brent Simmons, Christine Webber, Dave Wilkinson II, James Snell, Jonathan LaCour, Kyle Mahan, Manton Reece, Pelle Wessman, and Tantek Çelik.