Weblogs: Atom

Atom at ApacheCon 2003

Thursday, November 20, 2003

ApacheCon is an annual event in the Apache calendar. Its an excuse for the multitude of projects to show off their work. One very nice surprise is the addition of two Atom sessions.

Mark Pilgrim and Joe Gregorio duo'ed in two back to back sessions titled "The Atom API" and "Extending HTTP Authentication" on Monday.

So far feedback has been pretty quiet about the two Atom sessions - but I'd expect some more when the jet-lag wears off. Haiko Hebig has a link to the PDF slides of Mark's presentation.

Having a look through the slides indicates a well thought-out criticism of previous APIs from LiveJournal through to MetaWeblog, along with the fairly damning and conclusive statement:

Metaweblog API

So we've reinvented XML, over RPC, over XML. Badly

The slides on the AtomAPI are crystal clear. I wish I had these slides when I was doing the PHP Atom implementation! I'm certainly tempted to implement more of the AtomAPI specification based on this presentation.

Ted Leung has a very positive write-up on Mark and Joe's presentation, and mentions a memorable (perhaps milestone) comment on Atom from Roy Fielding (the "father" or ReST, who was in the audience for Joe's talk):

But at the end, Roy basically told Joe and Mark that they were doing it the right way. Now that's what I call validation, and its the kind of wonderful face to face thing that happens at ApacheCon.

Weblogs: Atom

Atom at ApacheCon 2003

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