Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Using XFN with FOAF

So, before I just start splattering your screen with Acronyms, lets define a
few, eh?

Generally,
you wouldn't combine an XHTML standard with a different XML Schema.  But, I've personally decided
the best way to use the two together.

First, declare the XHTML namespace in your FOAF
file.  This is with all the others, and generally looks like xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml".


Next, go to where you have included your contacts.  For each <foaf:knows>
tag, add inside of it xhtml:rel="contact" or similar,
following the XFN standards.

And voila!  You now have XFN and FOAF working
together.  Of course, the only problem is that nobody quite supports this standard yet,
but it will hopefully come in the future.

My Guidelines for using XFN in FOAF is that it
should be used when referencing another <foaf:Person>
In fact, if you want, you should probably even add xhtml:rel="me"
to your own <foaf:Person>.

1 comment:

  1. This seems like sort of a "Well, DUH! yeah. Of course!" So why aren't
    people doing this? (I don't mean to imply that your idea is a bad or dumb one, quite the opposite.
    It's so logical that it should be self-evident.)

    I'm going to start
    using it in my own links. Thanks for putting it all together in a logical manner. :-)

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