This specification defines the HTML microdata mechanism. This mechanism allows machine-readable data to be embedded in HTML documents in an easy-to-write manner, with an unambiguous parsing model. It is compatible with numerous other data formats including RDF and JSON.
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svn checkout http://svn.whatwg.org/webapps/This specification is an extension to the HTML5 language. All normative content in the HTML5 specification, unless specifically overridden by this specification, is intended to be the basis for this specification.
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Table of ContentsThis specification depends on the Web IDL and HTML5 specifications. [WEBIDL] [HTML5]
2 TerminologyThis specification relies heavily on the HTML5 specification to define underlying terms.
HTML5 defines the concept of DOM collections and the HTMLCollection interface, as well as the concept of IDL attributes reflecting content attributes. It also defines tree order and the concept of a node's home subtree.
HTML5 defines the terms URL, valid URL, absolute URL, and resolve a URL.
HTML5 defines the terms alphanumeric ASCII characters, space characters split a string on spaces, converted to ASCII uppercase, and prefix match.
HTML5 defines the meaning of the term HTML elements, as well as all the elements referenced in this specification. It also defines the HTMLElement and HTMLDocument interfaces. It defines the specific concept of the title element in the context of an HTMLDocument. In the context of content models it defines the terms flow content and phrasing content. It also defines what an element's ID or language is in HTML.
HTML5 defines the set of global attributes, as well as terms used in describing attributes and their processing, such as the concept of a boolean attribute, of an unordered set of unique space-separated tokens, of a valid non-negative integer, of a date, a time, a global date and time, a valid date string, and a valid global date and time string.
HTML5 defines what the document's current address is.
Finally, HTML5 also defines the concepts of drag-and-drop initialization steps and of the list of dragged nodes, which come up in the context of drag-and-drop interfaces.
3 Conformance requirementsAll diagrams, examples, and notes in this specification are non-normative, as are all sections explicitly marked non-normative. Everything else in this specification is normative.
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in the normative parts of this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC2119. The key word "OPTIONALLY" in the normative parts of this document is to be interpreted with the same normative meaning as "MAY" and "OPTIONAL". For readability, these words do not appear in all uppercase letters in this specification. [RFC2119]
Requirements phrased in the imperative as part of algorithms (such as "strip any leading space characters" or "return false and abort these steps") are to be interpreted with the meaning of the key word ("must", "should", "may", etc) used in introducing the algorithm.
For example, were the spec to say:
To eat a kiwi, the user must: 1. Peel the kiwi. 2. Eat the kiwi flesh.
...it would be equivalent to the following:
To eat a kiwi: 1. The user must peel the kiwi. 2. The user must eat the kiwi flesh.
Here the key word is "must".
The former (imperative) style is generally preferred in this specification for stylistic reasons.
Conformance requirements phrased as algorithms or specific steps may be implemented in any manner, so long as the end result is equivalent. (In particular, the algorithms defined in this specification are intended to be easy to follow, and not intended to be performant.)
4 Introduction 4.1 OverviewThis section is non-normative.
Sometimes, it is desirable to annotate content with specific machine-readable labels, e.g. to allow generic scripts to provide services that are customised to the page, or to enable content from a variety of cooperating authors to be processed by a single script in a consistent manner.
For this purpose, authors can use the microdata features described in this section. Microdata allows nested groups of name-value pairs to be added to documents, in parallel with the existing content.
4.2 The basic syntaxThis section is non-normative.
At a high level, microdata consists of a group of name-value pairs. The groups are called items, and each name-value pair is a property. Items and properties are represented by regular elements.
To create an item, the itemscope attribute is used.
To add a property to an item, the itemprop attribute is used on one of the item's descendants.
Here there are two items, each of which has the property "name":
<div itemscope> <p>My name is <span itemprop="name">Elizabeth</span>.</p> </div> <div itemscope> <p>My name is <span itemprop="name">Daniel</span>.</p> </div>
Properties generally have values that are strings.
Here the item has three properties:
<div itemscope> <p>My name is <span itemprop="name">Neil</span>.</p> <p>My band is called <span itemprop="band">Four Parts Water</span>.</p> <p>I am <span itemprop="nationality">British</span>.</p> </div>
When a string value is a URLs, it is expressed using the a element and its href attribute, the img element and its src attribute, or other elements that link to or embed external resources.
In this example, the item has one property, "image", whose value is a URL:
<div itemscope> <img itemprop="image" src="google-logo.png" alt="Google"> </div>
When a string value is in some machine-readable format unsuitable for human consumption, it is expressed using the value attribute of the data element, with the human-readable version given in the element's contents.
Here, there is an item with a property whose value is a product ID. The ID is not human-friendly, so the product's name is used the human-visible text instead of the ID.
<h1 itemscope> <data itemprop="product-id" value="9678AOU879">The Instigator 2000</data> </h1>
For date- and time-related data, the time element and its datetime attribute can be used instead.
In this example, the item has one property, "birthday", whose value is a date:
<div itemscope> I was born on <time itemprop="birthday" datetime="2009-05-10">May 10th 2009</time>. </div>
Properties can also themselves be groups of name-value pairs, by putting the itemscope attribute on the element that declares the property.
Items that are not part of others are called top-level microdata items.
In this example, the outer item represents a person, and the inner one represents a band:
<div itemscope> <p>Name: <span itemprop="name">Amanda</span></p> <p>Band: <span itemprop="band" itemscope> <span itemprop="name">Jazz Band</span> (<span itemprop="size">12</span> players)</span></p> </div>
The outer item here has two properties, "name" and "band". The "name" is "Amanda", and the "band" is an item in its own right, with two properties, "name" and "size". The "name" of the band is "Jazz Band", and the "size" is "12".
The outer item in this example is a top-level microdata item.
Properties that are not descendants of the element with the itemscope attribute can be associated with the item using the itemref attribute. This attribute takes a list of IDs of elements to crawl in addition to crawling the children of the element with the itemscope attribute.
This example is the same as the previous one, but all the properties are separated from their items:
<div itemscope id="amanda" itemref="a b"></div> <p id="a">Name: <span itemprop="name">Amanda</span></p> <div id="b" itemprop="band" itemscope itemref="c"></div> <div id="c"> <p>Band: <span itemprop="name">Jazz Band</span></p> <p>Size: <span itemprop="size">12</span> players</p> </div>
This gives the same result as the previous example. The first item has two properties, "name", set to "Amanda", and "band", set to another item. That second item has two further properties, "name", set to "Jazz Band", and "size", set to "12".
An item can have multiple properties with the same name and different values.
This example describes an ice cream, with two flavors:
<div itemscope> <p>Flavors in my favorite ice cream:</p> <ul> <li itemprop="flavor">Lemon sorbet</li> <li itemprop="flavor">Apricot sorbet</li> </ul> </div>
This thus results in an item with two properties, both "flavor", having the values "Lemon sorbet" and "Apricot sorbet".
An element introducing a property can also introduce multiple properties at once, to avoid duplication when some of the properties have the same value.
Here we see an item with two properties, "favorite-color" and "favorite-fruit", both set to the value "orange":
<div itemscope> <span itemprop="favorite-color favorite-fruit">orange</span> </div>
It's important to note that there is no relationship between the microdata and the content of the document where the microdata is marked up.
There is no semantic difference, for instance, between the following two examples:
<figure> <img src="castle.jpeg"> <figcaption><span itemscope><span itemprop="name">The Castle</span></span> (1986)</figcaption> </figure>
<span itemscope><meta itemprop="name" content="The Castle"></span> <figure> <img src="castle.jpeg"> <figcaption>The Castle (1986)</figcaption> </figure>
Both have a figure with a caption, and both, completely unrelated to the figure, have an item with a name-value pair with the name "name" and the value "The Castle". The only difference is that if the user drags the caption out of the document, in the former case, the item will be included in the drag-and-drop data. In neither case is the image in any way associated with the item.
4.3 Typed itemsThis section is non-normative.
The examples in the previous section show how information could be marked up on a page that doesn't expect its microdata to be re-used. Microdata is most useful, though, when it is used in contexts where other authors and readers are able to cooperate to make new uses of the markup.
For this purpose, it is necessary to give each item a type, such as "http://example.com/person", or "http://example.org/cat", or "http://band.example.net/". Types are identified as URLs.
The type for an item is given as the value of an itemtype attribute on the same element as the itemscope attribute.
Here, the item's type is "http://example.org/animals#cat":
<section itemscope itemtype="http://example.org/animals#cat"> <h1 itemprop="name">Hedral</h1> <p itemprop="desc">Hedral is a male american domestic shorthair, with a fluffy black fur with white paws and belly.</p> <img itemprop="img" src="hedral.jpeg" alt="" title="Hedral, age 18 months"> </section>
In this example the "http://example.org/animals#cat" item has three properties, a "name" ("Hedral"), a "desc" ("Hedral is..."), and an "img" ("hedral.jpeg").
The type gives the context for the properties, thus selecting a vocabulary: a property named "class" given for an item with the type "http://census.example/person" might refer to the economic class of an individual, while a property named "class" given for an item with the type "http://example.com/school/teacher" might refer to the classroom a teacher has been assigned. Several types can share a vocabulary. For example, the types "http://example.org/people/teacher" and "http://example.org/people/engineer" could be defined to use the same vocabulary (though maybe some properties would not be especially useful in both cases, e.g. maybe the "http://example.org/people/engineer" type might not typically be used with the "classroom" property). Multiple types defined to use the same vocabulary can be given for a single item by listing the URLs as a space-separated list in the attribute' value. An item cannot be given two types if they do not use the same vocabulary, however.
This section is non-normative.
Sometimes, an item gives information about a topic that has a global identifier. For example, books can be identified by their ISBN number.
Vocabularies (as identified by the itemtype attribute) can be designed such that items get associated with their global identifier in an unambiguous way by expressing the global identifiers as URLs given in an itemid attribute.
The exact meaning of the URLs given in itemid attributes depends on the vocabulary used.
Here, an item is talking about a particular book:
<dl itemscope
itemtype="http://vocab.example.net/book"
itemid="urn:isbn:0-330-34032-8">
<dt>Title
<dd itemprop="title">The Reality Dysfunction
<dt>Author
<dd itemprop="author">Peter F. Hamilton
<dt>Publication date
<dd><time itemprop="pubdate" datetime="1996-01-26">26 January 1996</time>
</dl>
The "http://vocab.example.net/book" vocabulary in this example would define that the itemid attribute takes a urn: URL pointing to the ISBN of the book.
This section is non-normative.
Using microdata means using a vocabulary. For some purposes, an ad-hoc vocabulary is adequate. For others, a vocabulary will need to be designed. Where possible, authors are encouraged to re-use existing vocabularies, as this makes content re-use easier.
When designing new vocabularies, identifiers can be created either using URLs, or, for properties, as plain words (with no dots or colons). For URLs, conflicts with other vocabularies can be avoided by only using identifiers that correspond to pages that the author has control over.
For instance, if Jon and Adam both write content at example.com, at http://example.com/~jon/... and http://example.com/~adam/... respectively, then they could select identifiers of the form "http://example.com/~jon/name" and "http://example.com/~adam/name" respectively.
Properties whose names are just plain words can only be used within the context of the types for which they are intended; properties named using URLs can be reused in items of any type. If an item has no type, and is not part of another item, then if its properties have names that are just plain words, they are not intended to be globally unique, and are instead only intended for limited use. Generally speaking, authors are encouraged to use either properties with globally unique names (URLs) or ensure that their items are typed.
Here, an item is an "http://example.org/animals#cat", and most of the properties have names that are words defined in the context of that type. There are also a few additional properties whose names come from other vocabularies.
<section itemscope itemtype="http://example.org/animals#cat"> <h1 itemprop="name http://example.com/fn">Hedral</h1> <p itemprop="desc">Hedral is a male american domestic shorthair, with a fluffy <span itemprop="http://example.com/color">black</span> fur with <span itemprop="http://example.com/color">white</span> paws and belly.</p> <img itemprop="img" src="hedral.jpeg" alt="" title="Hedral, age 18 months"> </section>
This example has one item with the type "http://example.org/animals#cat" and the following properties:
Property Value name Hedral http://example.com/fn Hedral desc Hedral is a male american domestic shorthair, with a fluffy black fur with white paws and belly. http://example.com/color black http://example.com/color white img .../hedral.jpeg 4.6 Using the microdata DOM APIThis section is non-normative.
The microdata becomes even more useful when scripts can use it to expose information to the user, for example offering it in a form that can be used by other applications.
The document.getItems(typeNames) method provides access to the top-level microdata items. It returns a NodeList containing the items with the specified types, or all types if no argument is specified.
Each item is represented in the DOM by the element on which the relevant itemscope attribute is found. These elements have their element.itemScope IDL attribute set to true.
The type(s) of items can be obtained using the element.itemType IDL attribute on the element with the itemscope attribute.
This sample shows how the getItems() method can be used to obtain a list of all the top-level microdata items of a particular type given in the document:
var cats = document.getItems("http://example.com/feline");
Once an element representing an item has been obtained, its properties can be extracted using the properties IDL attribute. This attribute returns an HTMLPropertiesCollection, which can be enumerated to go through each element that adds one or more properties to the item. It can also be indexed by name, which will return an object with a list of the elements that add properties with that name.
Each element that adds a property also has a itemValue IDL attribute that returns its value.
This sample gets the first item of type "http://example.net/user" and then pops up an alert using the "name" property from that item.
var user = document.getItems('http://example.net/user')[0];
alert('Hello ' + user.properties['name'][0].itemValue + '!');
The HTMLPropertiesCollection object, when indexed by name in this way, actually returns a PropertyNodeList object with all the matching properties. The PropertyNodeList object can be used to obtain all the values at once using its getValues method, which returns an array of all the values.
In an earlier example, a "http://example.org/animals#cat" item had two "http://example.com/color" values. This script looks up the first such item and then lists all its values.
var cat = document.getItems('http://example.org/animals#cat')[0];
var colors = cat.properties['http://example.com/color'].getValues();
var result;
if (colors.length == 0) {
result = 'Color unknown.';
} else if (colors.length == 1) {
result = 'Color: ' + colors[0];
} else {
result = 'Colors:';
for (var i = 0; i < colors.length; i += 1)
result += ' ' + colors[i];
}
It's also possible to get a list of all the property names using the object's names IDL attribute.
This example creates a big list with a nested list for each item on the page, each with of all the property names used in that item.
var outer = document.createElement('ul');
var items = document.getItems();
for (var item = 0; item < items.length; item += 1) {
var itemLi = document.createElement('li');
var inner = document.createElement('ul');
for (var name = 0; name < items[item].properties.names.length; name += 1) {
var propLi = document.createElement('li');
propLi.appendChild(document.createTextNode(items[item].properties.names[name]));
inner.appendChild(propLi);
}
itemLi.appendChild(inner);
outer.appendChild(itemLi);
}
document.body.appendChild(outer);
If faced with the following from an earlier example:
<section itemscope itemtype="http://example.org/animals#cat"> <h1 itemprop="name http://example.com/fn">Hedral</h1> <p itemprop="desc">Hedral is a male american domestic shorthair, with a fluffy <span itemprop="http://example.com/color">black</span> fur with <span itemprop="http://example.com/color">white</span> paws and belly.</p> <img itemprop="img" src="hedral.jpeg" alt="" title="Hedral, age 18 months"> </section>
...it would result in the following output:
(The duplicate occurrence of "http://example.com/color" is not included in the list.)
5 Encoding microdataThe following attributes are added as global attributes to HTML elements:
5.1 The microdata modelThe microdata model consists of groups of name-value pairs known as items.
Each group is known as an item. Each item can have item types, a global identifier (if the vocabulary specified by the item types support global identifiers for items), and a list of name-value pairs. Each name in the name-value pair is known as a property, and each property has one or more values. Each value is either a string or itself a group of name-value pairs (an item). The names are unordered relative to each other, but if a particular name has multiple values, they do have a relative order.
An item is said to be a typed item when either it has an item type, or it is the value of a property of a typed item. The relevant types for a typed item is the item's item types, if it has one, or else is the relevant types of the item for which it is a property's value.
5.2 ItemsEvery HTML element may have an itemscope attribute specified. The itemscope attribute is a boolean attribute.
An element with the itemscope attribute specified creates a new item, a group of name-value pairs.
Elements with an itemscope attribute may have an itemtype attribute specified, to give the item types of the item.
The itemtype attribute, if specified, must have a value that is an unordered set of unique space-separated tokens that are case-sensitive, each of which is a valid URL that is an absolute URL, and all of which are defined to use the same vocabulary. The attribute's value must have at least one token.
The item types of an item are the tokens obtained by splitting the element's itemtype attribute's value on spaces. If the itemtype attribute is missing or parsing it in this way finds no tokens, the item is said to have no item types.
The item types must all be types defined in applicable specifications and must all be defined to use the same vocabulary.
Except if otherwise specified by that specification, the URLs given as the item types should not be automatically dereferenced.
A specification could define that its item type can be derefenced to provide the user with help information, for example. In fact, vocabulary authors are encouraged to provide useful information at the given URL.
Item types are opaque identifiers, and user agents must not dereference unknown item types, or otherwise deconstruct them, in order to determine how to process items that use them.
The itemtype attribute must not be specified on elements that do not have an itemscope attribute specified.
Elements with an itemscope attribute and an itemtype attribute that references a vocabulary that is defined to support global identifiers for items may also have an itemid attribute specified, to give a global identifier for the item, so that it can be related to other items on pages elsewhere on the Web.
The itemid attribute, if specified, must have a value that is a valid URL potentially surrounded by spaces.
The global identifier of an item is the value of its element's itemid attribute, if it has one, resolved relative to the element on which the attribute is specified. If the itemid attribute is missing or if resolving it fails, it is said to have no global identifier.
The itemid attribute must not be specified on elements that do not have both an itemscope attribute and an itemtype attribute specified, and must not be specified on elements with an itemscope attribute whose itemtype attribute specifies a vocabulary that does not support global identifiers for items, as defined by that vocabulary's specification.
The exact meaning of a global identifier is determined by the vocabulary's specification. It is up to such specifications to define whether multiple items with the same global identifier (whether on the same page or on different pages) are allowed to exist, and what the processing rules for that vocabulary are with respect to handling the case of multiple items with the same ID.
Elements with an itemscope attribute may have an itemref attribute specified, to give a list of additional elements to crawl to find the name-value pairs of the item.
The itemref attribute, if specified, must have a value that is an unordered set of unique space-separated tokens that are case-sensitive, consisting of IDs of elements in the same home subtree.
The itemref attribute must not be specified on elements that do not have an itemscope attribute specified.
The itemref attribute is not part of the microdata data model. It is merely a syntactic construct to aid authors in adding annotations to pages where the data to be annotated does not follow a convenient tree structure. For example, it allows authors to mark up data in a table so that each column defines a separate item, while keeping the properties in the cells.
This example shows a simple vocabulary used to describe the products of a model railway manufacturer. The vocabulary has just five property names:
This vocabulary has four defined item types:
Each item that uses this vocabulary can be given one or more of these types, depending on what the product is.
Thus, a locomotive might be marked up as:
<dl itemscope itemtype="http://md.example.com/loco
http://md.example.com/lighting">
<dt>Name:
<dd itemprop="name">Tank Locomotive (DB 80)
<dt>Product code:
<dd itemprop="product-code">33041
<dt>Scale:
<dd itemprop="scale">HO
<dt>Digital:
<dd itemprop="digital">Delta
</dl>
A turnout lantern retrofit kit might be marked up as:
<dl itemscope itemtype="http://md.example.com/track
http://md.example.com/lighting">
<dt>Name:
<dd itemprop="name">Turnout Lantern Kit
<dt>Product code:
<dd itemprop="product-code">74470
<dt>Purpose:
<dd>For retrofitting 2 <span itemprop="track-type">C</span> Track
turnouts. <meta itemprop="scale" content="HO">
</dl>
A passenger car with no lighting might be marked up as:
<dl itemscope itemtype="http://md.example.com/passengers"> <dt>Name: <dd itemprop="name">Express Train Passenger Car (DB Am 203) <dt>Product code: <dd itemprop="product-code">8710 <dt>Scale: <dd itemprop="scale">Z </dl>
Great care is necessary when creating new vocabularies. Often, a hierarchical approach to types can be taken that results in a vocabulary where each item only ever has a single type, which is generally much simpler to manage.
5.3 Names: theitemprop attribute
Every HTML element may have an itemprop attribute specified, if doing so adds one or more properties to one or more items (as defined below).
The itemprop attribute, if specified, must have a value that is an unordered set of unique space-separated tokens that are case-sensitive, representing the names of the name-value pairs that it adds. The attribute's value must have at least one token.
Each token must be either:
Specifications that introduce defined property names that are not absolute URLs must ensure all such property names contain no "." (U+002E) characters, no ":" (U+003A) characters, and no space characters.
When an element with an itemprop attribute adds a property to multiple items, the requirement above regarding the tokens applies for each item individually.
The property names of an element are the tokens that the element's itemprop attribute is found to contain when its value is split on spaces, with the order preserved but with duplicates removed (leaving only the first occurrence of each name).
Within an item, the properties are unordered with respect to each other, except for properties with the same name, which are ordered in the order they are given by the algorithm that defines the properties of an item.
In the following example, the "a" property has the values "1" and "2", in that order, but whether the "a" property comes before the "b" property or not is not important:
<div itemscope> <p itemprop="a">1</p> <p itemprop="a">2</p> <p itemprop="b">test</p> </div>
Thus, the following is equivalent:
<div itemscope> <p itemprop="b">test</p> <p itemprop="a">1</p> <p itemprop="a">2</p> </div>
As is the following:
<div itemscope> <p itemprop="a">1</p> <p itemprop="b">test</p> <p itemprop="a">2</p> </div>
And the following:
<div id="x"> <p itemprop="a">1</p> </div> <div itemscope itemref="x"> <p itemprop="b">test</p> <p itemprop="a">2</p> </div>5.4 Values
The property value of a name-value pair added by an element with an itemprop attribute is as given for the first matching case in the following list:
itemscope attribute
The value is the item created by the element.
meta element
The value is the value of the element's content attribute, if any, or the empty string if there is no such attribute.
audio, embed, iframe, img, source, track, or video element
The value is the absolute URL that results from resolving the value of the element's src attribute relative to the element at the time the attribute is set, or the empty string if there is no such attribute or if resolving it results in an error.
a, area, or link element
The value is the absolute URL that results from resolving the value of the element's href attribute relative to the element at the time the attribute is set, or the empty string if there is no such attribute or if resolving it results in an error.
object element
The value is the absolute URL that results from resolving the value of the element's data attribute relative to the element at the time the attribute is set, or the empty string if there is no such attribute or if resolving it results in an error.
data element
The value is the value of the element's value attribute, if it has one, or the empty string otherwise.
time element
The value is the element's datetime value.
The value is the element's textContent.
The URL property elements are the a, area, audio, embed, iframe, img, link, object, source, track, and video elements.
If a property's value, as defined by the property's definition, is an absolute URL, the property must be specified using a URL property element.
These requirements do not apply just because a property value happens to match the syntax for a URL. They only apply if the property is explicitly defined as taking such a value.
For example, a book about the first moon landing could be called "mission:moon". A "title" property from a vocabulary that defines a title as being a string would not expect the title to be given in an a element, even though it looks like a URL. On the other hand, if there was a (rather narrowly scoped!) vocabulary for "books whose titles look like URLs" which had a "title" property defined to take a URL, then the property would expect the title to be given in an a element (or one of the other URL property elements), because of the requirement above.
To find the properties of an item defined by the element root, the user agent must run the following steps. These steps are also used to flag microdata errors.
Let results, memory, and pending be empty lists of elements.
Add the element root to memory.
Add the child elements of root, if any, to pending.
If root has an itemref attribute, split the value of that itemref attribute on spaces. For each resulting token ID, if there is an element in the home subtree of root with the ID ID, then add the first such element to pending.
Loop: If pending is empty, jump to the step labeled end of loop.
Remove an element from pending and let current be that element.
If current is already in memory, there is a microdata error; return to the step labeled loop.
Add current to memory.
If current does not have an itemscope attribute, then: add all the child elements of current to pending.
If current has an itemprop attribute specified and the element has one or more property names, then add the element to results.
Return to the step labeled loop.
End of loop: Sort results in tree order.
Return results.
A document must not contain any items for which the algorithm to find the properties of an item finds any microdata errors.
An item is a top-level microdata item if its element does not have an itemprop attribute.
All itemref attributes in a Document must be such that there are no cycles in the graph formed from representing each item in the Document as a node in the graph and each property of an item whose value is another item as an edge in the graph connecting those two items.
A document must not contain any elements that have an itemprop attribute that would not be found to be a property of any of the items in that document were their properties all to be determined.
In this example, a single license statement is applied to two works, using itemref from the items representing the works:
<!DOCTYPE HTML> <html> <head> <title>Photo gallery</title> </head> <body> <h1>My photos</h1> <figure itemscope itemtype="http://n.whatwg.org/work" itemref="licenses"> <img itemprop="work" src="images/house.jpeg" alt="A white house, boarded up, sits in a forest."> <figcaption itemprop="title">The house I found.</figcaption> </figure> <figure itemscope itemtype="http://n.whatwg.org/work" itemref="licenses"> <img itemprop="work" src="images/mailbox.jpeg" alt="Outside the house is a mailbox. It has a leaflet inside."> <figcaption itemprop="title">The mailbox.</figcaption> </figure> <footer> <p id="licenses">All images licensed under the <a itemprop="license" href="http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php">MIT license</a>.</p> </footer> </body> </html>
The above results in two items with the type "http://n.whatwg.org/work", one with:
images/house.jpeg
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php
...and one with:
images/mailbox.jpeg
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php
Currently, the itemscope, itemprop, and other microdata attributes are only defined for HTML elements. This means that attributes with the literal names "itemscope", "itemprop", etc, do not cause microdata processing to occur on elements in other namespaces, such as SVG.
Thus, in the following example there is only one item, not two.
<p itemscope></p> <!-- this is an item (with no properties and no type) -->
<svg itemscope></svg> <!-- this is not, it's just an svg element with an invalid unknown attribute -->6 Microdata DOM API
partial interface Document {
NodeList getItems(optional DOMString typeNames); // microdata
};
partial interface HTMLElement {
// microdata
attribute boolean itemScope;
[PutForwards=value] readonly attribute DOMSettableTokenList itemType;
attribute DOMString itemId;
[PutForwards=value] readonly attribute DOMSettableTokenList itemRef;
[PutForwards=value] readonly attribute DOMSettableTokenList itemProp;
readonly attribute HTMLPropertiesCollection properties;
attribute any itemValue;
};
getItems( [ types ] )
Returns a NodeList of the elements in the Document that create items, that are not part of other items, and that are of the types given in the argument, if any are listed.
The types argument is interpreted as a space-separated list of types.
properties
If the element has an itemscope attribute, returns an HTMLPropertiesCollection object with all the element's properties. Otherwise, an empty HTMLPropertiesCollection object.
itemValue [ = value ]
Returns the element's value.
Can be set, to change the element's value. Setting the value when the element has no itemprop attribute or when the element's value is an item throws an InvalidAccessError exception.
The document.getItems(typeNames) method takes an optional string that contains an unordered set of unique space-separated tokens that are case-sensitive, representing types. When called, the method must return a live NodeList object containing all the elements in the document, in tree order, that are each top-level microdata items whose types include all the types specified in the method's argument, having obtained the types by splitting the string on spaces. If there are no tokens specified in the argument, or if the argument is missing, then the method must return a NodeList containing all the top-level microdata items in the document. When the method is invoked on a Document object again with the same argument, the user agent may return the same object as the object returned by the earlier call. In other cases, a new NodeList object must be returned.
The itemScope IDL attribute on HTML elements must reflect the itemscope content attribute. The itemType IDL attribute on HTML elements must reflect the itemtype content attribute. The itemId IDL attribute on HTML elements must reflect the itemid content attribute. The itemProp IDL attribute on HTML elements must reflect the itemprop content attribute. The itemRef IDL attribute on HTML elements must reflect the itemref content attribute.
The properties IDL attribute on HTML elements must return an HTMLPropertiesCollection rooted at the Document node, whose filter matches only elements that are the properties of the item created by the element on which the attribute was invoked, while that element is an item, and matches nothing the rest of the time.
The itemValue IDL attribute's behavior depends on the element, as follows:
itemprop attribute
The attribute must return null on getting and must throw an InvalidAccessError exception on setting.
itemscope attribute
The attribute must return the element itself on getting and must throw an InvalidAccessError exception on setting.
meta element
The attribute must act as it would if it was reflecting the element's content content attribute.
audio, embed, iframe, img, source, track, or video element
The attribute must act as it would if it was reflecting the element's src content attribute.
a, area, or link element
The attribute must act as it would if it was reflecting the element's href content attribute.
object element
The attribute must act as it would if it was reflecting the element's data content attribute.
data element
The attribute must act as it would if it was reflecting the element's value content attribute.
time element
On getting, if the element has a datetime content attribute, the IDL attribute must return that content attribute's value; otherwise, it must return the element's textContent. On setting, the IDL attribute must act as it would if it was reflecting the element's datetime content attribute.
The attribute must act the same as the element's textContent attribute.
When the itemValue IDL attribute is reflecting a content attribute or acting like the element's textContent attribute, the user agent must, on setting, convert the new value to the IDL DOMString value before using it according to the mappings described above.
In this example, a script checks to see if a particular element element is declaring a particular property, and if it is, it increments a counter:
if (element.itemProp.contains('color'))
count += 1;
This script iterates over each of the values of an element's itemref attribute, calling a function for each referenced element:
for (var index = 0; index < element.itemRef.length; index += 1) process(document.getElementById(element.itemRef[index]));6.1 HTMLPropertiesCollection
The HTMLPropertiesCollection interface is used for collections of elements that add name-value pairs to a particular item in the microdata model.
interface HTMLPropertiesCollection : HTMLCollection {
// inherits length and item()
getter PropertyNodeList? namedItem(DOMString name); // overrides inherited namedItem()
readonly attribute DOMString[] names;
};
typedef sequence<any> PropertyValueArray;
interface PropertyNodeList : NodeList {
PropertyValueArray getValues();
};
length
Returns the number of elements in the collection.
item(index)
Returns the element with index index from the collection. The items are sorted in tree order.
namedItem(name)
item(name)
Returns a PropertyNodeList object containing any elements that add a property named name.
Returns a PropertyNodeList object containing any elements that add a property named name. The name index has to be one of the values listed in the names list.
names
Returns an array with the property names of the elements in the collection.
getValues()
Returns an array of the various values that the relevant elements have.
The object's supported property indices are as defined for HTMLCollection objects.
The supported property names consist of the property names of all the elements represented by the collection.
The names attribute must return a live read only array object giving the property names of all the elements represented by the collection, listed in tree order, but with duplicates removed, leaving only the first occurrence of each name. The same object must be returned each time.
The namedItem(name) method must return a PropertyNodeList object representing a live view of the HTMLPropertiesCollection object, further filtered so that the only nodes in the PropertyNodeList object are those that have a property name equal to name. The nodes in the PropertyNodeList object must be sorted in tree order, and the same object must be returned each time a particular name is queried.
Members of the PropertyNodeList interface inherited from the NodeList interface must behave as they would on a NodeList object.
The getValues method the PropertyNodeList object must return a newly constructed array whose values are the values obtained from the itemValue DOM property of each of the elements represented by the object, in tree order.
If the itemprop attribute is present on link or meta, they are flow content and phrasing content. The link and meta elements may be used where phrasing content is expected if the itemprop attribute is present.
If a link element has an itemprop attribute, the rel attribute may be omitted.
If a meta element has an itemprop attribute, the name, http-equiv, and charset attributes must be omitted, and the content attribute must be present.
If the itemprop is specified on an a or area element, then the href attribute must also be specified.
If the itemprop is specified on an iframe element, then the data attribute must also be specified.
If the itemprop is specified on an embed element, then the data attribute must also be specified.
If the itemprop is specified on an object element, then the data attribute must also be specified.
If the itemprop is specified on a media element, then the src attribute must also be specified.
Given a list of nodes nodes in a Document, a user agent must run the following algorithm to :
Let result be an empty object.
Let items be an empty array.
For each node in nodes, check if the element is a top-level microdata item, and if it is then get the object for that element and add it to items.
Add an entry to result called "items" whose value is the array items.
Return the result of serializing result to JSON in the shortest possible way (meaning no whitespace between tokens, no unnecessary zero digits in numbers, and only using Unicode escapes in strings for characters that do not have a dedicated escape sequence), and with a lowercase "e" used, when appropriate, in the representation of any numbers. [JSON]
This algorithm returns an object with a single property that is an array, instead of just returning an array, so that it is possible to extend the algorithm in the future if necessary.
When the user agent is to get the object for an item item, optionally with a list of elements memory, it must run the following substeps:
Let result be an empty object.
Add item to memory.
If the item has any item types, add an entry to result called "type" whose value is an array listing the item types of item, in the order they were specified on the itemtype attribute.
If the item has a global identifier, add an entry to result called "id" whose value is the global identifier of item.
Let properties be an empty object.
For each element element that has one or more property names and is one of the properties of the item item, in the order those elements are given by the algorithm that returns the properties of an item, run the following substeps:
Let value be the property value of element.
If value is an item, then: If value is in memory, then let value be the string "ERROR". Otherwise, get the object for value, passing a copy of memory, and then replace value with the object returned from those steps.
For each name name in element's property names, run the following substeps:
If there is no entry named name in properties, then add an entry named name to properties whose value is an empty array.
Append value to the entry named name in properties.
Add an entry to result called "properties" whose value is the object properties.
Return result.
application/microdata+json
This registration is for community review and will be submitted to the IESG for review, approval, and registration with IANA.
application/json [JSON]
application/json [JSON]
application/json [JSON]
application/json [JSON]
application/microdata+json type asserts that the resource is a JSON text that consists of an object with a single entry called "items" consisting of an array of entries, each of which consists of an object with an entry called "id" whose value is a string, an entry called "type" whose value is another string, and an entry called "properties" whose value is an object whose entries each have a value consisting of an array of either objects or strings, the objects being of the same form as the objects in the aforementioned "items" entry. Thus, the relevant specifications are the JSON specification and this specification. [JSON]
Applications that transfer data intended for use with HTML's microdata feature, especially in the context of drag-and-drop, are the primary application class for this type.
application/json [JSON]
application/json [JSON]
application/json [JSON]
Fragment identifiers used with application/microdata+json resources have the same semantics as when used with application/json (namely, at the time of writing, no semantics at all). [JSON]
All references are normative unless marked "Non-normative".
XMLHttpRequest, A. van Kesteren. W3C.
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