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RSS FAQs - Atom Syndiation Format RFC4287 Reference Document

By: M. Nottingham, Ed. & R. Sayre, Ed.

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6.4.  Extension Elements

   Atom allows foreign markup anywhere in an Atom document, except where
   it is explicitly forbidden.  Child elements of atom:entry, atom:feed,
   atom:source, and Person constructs are considered Metadata elements
   and are described below.  Child elements of Person constructs are
   considered to apply to the construct.  The role of other foreign
   markup is undefined by this specification.

6.4.1.  Simple Extension Elements

   A Simple Extension element MUST NOT have any attributes or child
   elements.  The element MAY contain character data or be empty.
   Simple Extension elements are not Language-Sensitive.

   simpleExtensionElement =
      element * - atom:* {
         text
      }

   The element can be interpreted as a simple property (or name/value
   pair) of the parent element that encloses it.  The pair consisting of
   the namespace-URI of the element and the local name of the element
   can be interpreted as the name of the property.  The character data
   content of the element can be interpreted as the value of the
   property.  If the element is empty, then the property value can be
   interpreted as an empty string.

6.4.2.  Structured Extension Elements

   The root element of a Structured Extension element MUST have at least
   one attribute or child element.  It MAY have attributes, it MAY
   contain well-formed XML content (including character data), or it MAY
   be empty.  Structured Extension elements are Language-Sensitive.

   structuredExtensionElement =
      element * - atom:* {
         (attribute * { text }+,
            (text|anyElement)*)
       | (attribute * { text }*,
          (text?, anyElement+, (text|anyElement)*))
      }

   The structure of a Structured Extension element, including the order
   of its child elements, could be significant.

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   This specification does not provide an interpretation of a Structured
   Extension element.  The syntax of the XML contained in the element
   (and an interpretation of how the element relates to its containing
   element) is defined by the specification of the Atom extension.

7.  IANA Considerations

   An Atom Document, when serialized as XML 1.0, can be identified with
   the following media type:

   MIME media type name:  application
   MIME subtype name:  atom+xml
   Mandatory parameters:  None.
   Optional parameters:
      "charset":  This parameter has semantics identical to the charset
         parameter of the "application/xml" media type as specified in
         [RFC3023].
   Encoding considerations:  Identical to those of "application/xml" as
      described in [RFC3023], Section 3.2.
   Security considerations:  As defined in this specification.
      In addition, as this media type uses the "+xml" convention, it
      shares the same security considerations as described in [RFC3023],
      Section 10.
   Interoperability considerations:  There are no known interoperability
      issues.
   Published specification:  This specification.
   Applications that use this media type:  No known applications
      currently use this media type.

   Additional information:

   Magic number(s):  As specified for "application/xml" in [RFC3023],
      Section 3.2.
   File extension:  .atom
   Fragment identifiers:  As specified for "application/xml" in
      [RFC3023], Section 5.
   Base URI:  As specified in [RFC3023], Section 6.
   Macintosh File Type code:  TEXT
   Person and email address to contact for further information:  Mark
      Nottingham <mnot@pobox.com>
   Intended usage:  COMMON
   Author/Change controller:  IESG

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