The launch of the Apache mod_atom module [LWN.net]

Tim Bray has announced the launch of mod_atom, an Apache web server extension module that supports the Atom Publishing Protocol (APP), according to Kurt Cagle on O'Reilly's XML.com.

Atom is defined by the IETF draft standard RFC 4287. The Wikipedia definition of Atom states:

The name Atom applies to a pair of related standards. The Atom Syndication Format is an XML language used for web feeds, while the Atom Publishing Protocol (APP for short) is a simple HTTP-based protocol for creating and updating Web resources.

Tim Bray explains his reasons for creating mod_atom:

This is a stripped-down implementation of the server side of the Atom Publishing Protocol as an Apache module, implemented in C. It felt like something that needed to exist and I am better-qualified for this particular chore than your average geek; having said that, I have no idea if anyone actually needs such a thing.

Features and goals of the mod_atom project include:

Implementation of the entire Atom Protocol.
Data is stored in files instead of a database, for speed.
Has the ability to preserve foreign markup information.
Can work under Apache Multi-Processing Modules.
Uses a Uniform Resource Name scheme for publication portability.
Uses the AtomPub directive in the Apache configuration to define publications.
Licensed under the Apache V2 license.

The mod_atom project is currently in a state of development:

Technical Status · It’s not really ready to use, but I’m publishing it because I want to start talking and get some advice and opinions on what I should do about some things, and that’s easier if you can point at source code.

The author is requesting comments and contributions, a project TODO list has been published for those who are interested in lending a hand.

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Straight from the supplied link, Wikipedia sez ...

Posted Jul 5, 2007 18:41 UTC (Thu) by felixfix (subscriber, #242) [Link]

Web feeds allow software programs to check for updates published on a web site. To provide a web feed, a site owner may use specialized software (such as a content management system) that publishes a list (or "feed") of recent articles or content in a standardized, machine-readable format. The feed can then be downloaded by web sites that syndicate content from the feed, or by feed reader programs that allow Internet users to subscribe to feeds and view their content.

A feed contains entries, which may be headlines, full-text articles, excerpts, summaries, and/or links to content on a web site, along with various metadata.

Straight from the supplied link, Wikipedia sez ...

Posted Jul 5, 2007 22:46 UTC (Thu) by elanthis (subscriber, #6227) [Link]

You've done a fine job of describing what ATOM the format is, but that wasn't the question. The question was what the purpose of the ATOM Publishing Protocol is, presumably asked since ATOM the format/feed can already be served perfectly fine over regular HTTP on the Web.

This really isn't described in any thorough useful way on the Wikipedia article. There is a link that might be of some use:

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/x-atompp1/

To sum up, the ATOM Publishing Protocol is a set of formats and "protocols" on top of HTTP that make it easy for machines to find, organize, and update a disparate list of individual feeds.

In other words, it's a way for remote applications to manage feeds (or any kind of data that can be represented by a feed, such as an entire blog or news database) without having to read and write whole ATOM files. You could POST an individual entry and have it automatically added to a feed, for example.

Straight from the supplied link, Wikipedia sez ...

Posted Jul 14, 2007 6:03 UTC (Sat) by muwlgr (guest, #35359) [Link]

In short, those who did not understand NNTP, are doomed to reinvent it, poorly :>