intertwingly

Given the relaunch of OpenSearch, and given that OpenSearch results can be included in feeds, it seemed time to spend some of my recreational programming time on adding Feed Validator support for the OpenSearch namespace extensions.

The spec is cleanly written.  It is organized as a series of small sections, each of which makes a few testable assertions, such as on the cardinality of the element, or restrictions on the value space.

This makes it easy to organize the test cases.  Each section implented so far is represented by a hypertext link to a directory of tests for that section, and each directory listing contains a link to the corresponding section in the specification.  Tests can be run by clicking on the green Universal Feed Icon next to the testcase itself.

My one quibble with the spec so far is that like Mark Nottingham, I have an aversion of usage of XML QNames as attribute values.  At the moment, I haven’t coded these tests.  My preference would be that this attribute be changed to a simple URI.

Perhaps the next time I get a few free cycles, I’ll not only complete this, but go on to add tests and code for the OpenSearch description document.  My experience is that document formats that use mixed case names result is a significant contributor to common feed errors.