GeezerVison

The World Wide Web, restored to 800 pixels of glory.

GeezerVison is showing indieweb.org — JSON Feed

This article is a stub. You can help the IndieWeb wiki by expanding it with relevant information.

JSON Feed is a feed file in JSON format, created by Manton Reece and Brent Simmons.

Why

Modern web developers work more with JSON than XML; JSON Feed is easier to write and easier to read than XML-based feed formats like RSS and Atom.

This improved writability and readability means fewer bugs for both publishers and consuming code writers (like feed reader implementers).

IndieWeb Examples

Known has provided a feed in JSON since ???? and a JSON Feed (in development version) since 2017-05-28.
- JSON Feed with IndieWeb properties extension was added by Jonathan LaCour. (Previous PR).
Format co-creator Manton Reece runs micro.blog and is self-dogfooding. All hosted sites on the platform get https://your-name.micro.blog/feed.json. Users can also add an external JSON Feed under Account -> Feeds.
Jeremy Keith is providing JSON feeds for his journal, links, notes, and articles.
Colin Walker is using the JSON Feed plugin for WordPress for his blog.
Jonny Barnes is providing JSON feeds for his blog and notes since 2017-06-09
Matthias Ott is providing JSON feeds for his articles, notes, microblog, and links.
Daniel Goldsmith is providing JSON feed for his site since 2015-05-17, and posted the code he used to create this in Hugo.
Jamie Tanna has had JSON feed for his Hugo site since 2019-04-07
Dmitri Shuralyov is providing JSON Feed for his blog since 2023-10-26.
Paul Robert Lloyd is providing JSON Feed for his blog since 2017
myles has a JSON Feed at myles.garden/feed.json.

IndieWeb Extension

Known adds a _indieweb extension to the items in the JSON feed. This includes keys like:

type: a string for kinds of posts,
in-reply-to,
…

Koype uses the same _indieweb extension to expose the following on each post:

type: a string representing the kinds of posts
syndication: a list of syndicated copies of this entry.

And under _koype extension on the main feed:

version: The version of Koype used to serve this feed.
about: A link to Koype's main homepage (not the site's homepage).

Software Support

Software that supports consuming JSON Feed:

2017-06-02 jsonfeed2twitter library by Colin Devroe to tweet links from a JSON Feed [1]
2017-05-29 Breaker podcast app added support for JSON Feed [2]
2017-05-23 Inoreader supports JSON Feed [3]
2017-05-23 NewsBlur supports JSON Feed [4]
2017-05-22 Feedbin supports JSON Feed [5]
2017-05-22 News Explorer v1.6 supports JSON Feed [6]

Tools

JSON Feed Viewer
https://feed2json.org - convert RSS/Atom feeds to JSON Feed
granary
JSON feed plugin for WordPress
Official JSON Feed Validator to check if the feed JSON is valid, source available on GitHub
...

Sponsorship of the spec by IndieWeb Community

It has been proposed in late July 2020 by several people that the IndieWeb adopt/sponsor the JSON Feed spec as a community project for ongoing support/maintenance/guidance.

Conversation and debate on the issue can and should continue in the #meta channel in the IndieWeb chat. Prior chat conversation can be found at:

https://chat.indieweb.org/meta/2020-07-30#t1596147097753700
For convenience and thought, Manton Reece had drafted a list of overlap of JSON Feed with IndieWeb principles at https://gist.github.com/manton/7a8e4a7cd295dc2e2bc2dd4afa30583d

Voting

Please indicate your name below along with one of the following options: (1) your support for sponsorship by IndieWeb with a +1; (2) your abstention with a 0 or; (3) your disapproval for sponsorship with a -1 (along with any reasons you feel the community shouldn't support it).

+1 Chris Aldrich
+1 Manton Reece
+1 David Shanske
+1 Tantek Çelik — while JSON Feed was not developed "in" the IndieWeb community per se, it was definitely developed adjacent to and overlapping with (many IndieWeb community folks participated). In addition I think such adoption/sponsoring would help bring these communities together on common efforts, and encourage greater harmonization and convergence across our existing various JSON format based efforts such as mf2json, jf2 (in various flavors/uses), and JSON Feed.
Angelo Gladding — -1 if the goal is to bring a wider audience to version 1, perpetuating the property name discrepancies and potentially leading to two different IndieWeb-recommended JSON-based feed schemas; +1 if the goal is to coalesce with mf2 properties in a timely version 2 (a la jf2)
...