Recap of An Introduction to Microformats

I gave a talk on microformats Wednesday night at the San Diego PHP Meetup group. This was my first time giving a formal talk on the topic. I think it went pretty well and I got some good feedback. There was a lot of information and links covered (and some I forgot) so I decided to make a summary post. Let me know if you have any questions.

Resources

• An Introduction to Microformats slides. I added microformats to them because, of course. :]
• microformats.io: A brief introduction to microformats and links to several parsers. Includes web versions so you can try parsing microformats by direct HTML input or by entering a URL.
• microformats.org wiki: the microformats specifications and the parsing algorithm. I touched on some specific pages: principles, h-card, h-event, microformats2
• My event post for this meetup: used to demonstrate parsing an h-event
• Another event post: used to demonstrate the rsvp property as well as Webmention.
• Yet another event post: I should have remembered this one when discussing RSVPs, since it shows several RSVPs from different sites.
• mf2-to-iCalendar: a small PHP library that converts h-event microformats to iCalendar. This is what I use on my own calendar page.
• Webmention: a specification I mentioned that enables cross-site commenting. Many receivers of webmention will parse h-card and h-entry microformats to display responses.
• Micropub: a specification for publishing using third-party clients. It uses the microformats vocabulary.
• php-mf2: PHP parser library for microformats2
• Granary: a library and web service to convert between multiple formats, including microformats2
• XRay: a library and web service to parse structured content, including microformats2

Some people were really interested in Webmention and we ended up talking about it more after the event. I recommended Aaron's tutorial: Sending your First Webmention from Scratch. Schema.org also came up in that conversation and I mentioned Aaron's other post that documents the history of Google's recommended formats. They've changed a lot over the years, but they still parse microformats1 hReview.

Notes

These are mostly notes to myself, or other potential presenters.

I forgot to demo one of my favorite uses for microformats. I use the Granary web service to parse the h-feed on my notes page and generate an Atom feed: https://gregorlove.com/notes.atom.

I think it would help to discuss use-cases earlier in the talk. Through the questions and some discussion after the talk, I realized that wasn't fully clicking for people earlier in the talk.

The live demo of the parser went okay, though I should have planned out some more examples for the direct HTML input part instead of trying to come up with it off the top of my head. It would also be good to have some examples that emphasize the flexibility of microformat placement. We discussed that point, but a visual example would be better.

Be prepared to discuss schema.org, alternatives, pros and cons. I think I did okay with this. I chose to focus on the interesting consuming use-cases for microformats.

Thanks

Many thanks to SDPHP for this opportunity! I appreciate their attitude regarding speakers, “you don't have to be an expert; you are allowed to make mistakes; you are allowed to be nervous; enjoy the experience.” If you're in the area, you should definitely join us for a meetup.