

Enabling the real-time web with LiveDirectory.org (an early release) - tcarnell
http://livedirectory.org/

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tcarnell
I built LiveDirectory.org as a first attempt at providing a real and practical
way for anybody to publish and manage their own content so that application
developers can easily build real-time, event-driven web applications.

LiveDirectory aims to implement a WebHook style system, but with a real and
practical application that is designed to be used, and be useful.

LiveDirectory is currently at a very early stage of development, but I am most
interested to see what the HackerNews community think of the general idea...

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jimmybot
Isn't this PubSubHubbub, but not? What differentiates your protocol from PuSH?

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tcarnell
Thanks for the question!

I think that PubSubHubbub is mainly for integration with feeds (RSS, ATOM etc)
- correct me if I'm wrong! So the PubSubHubbub is somewhat restricted. So I
would say the difference between PubSubHubbub and LiveDirectory is that with
LiveDirectory the data that is passed around is JSON, which means that:

1). It can be almost limitless in its structure (using combinations of
objects, arrays, string, numbers and booleans) - RSS & Atom have very fixed
data structures, so if you want to represent some other data structure, for
example a client list, your latest special offers or your company office
addresses you're out of luck.

2). JSON data is often far easier to parse and process than XML, so the
callback notifications are much more 'developer friendly'.

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ch
Thanks for clarifying your intent, but I think the original commenter is
right, there seems to be little here so far that PuSH cannot do.

In fact there have been recent proposals for PuSH to gain JSON message formats
(I believe superfeedr is now providing JSON data as well).

That said, there certainly seems to be room for more PuSH hubs, perhaps that
is a direction you can take LiveDirectory.

References:

PubSubHubBub JSON Draft: <http://martin.atkins.me.uk/specs/pubsubhubbub-json>

SuperFeedr JSON: <http://blog.superfeedr.com/json-pubsubhubbub-notification/>

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tcarnell
Thanks for the extra-reading, I will definately take a look at those.

However, I will add that the whole 'pubsubhubbub' thing is very unfriendly
(including the silly name) for the people that would be it's most valuable
users, ie the people that are generating interesting, novel and valuable
online content...

...So in addition to the fact that LiveDirectory is already up and running and
working with JSON as the data language, it also aims to make life as easy as
possible for BOTH the content publishers AND application developers.

Actually, I see think that LiveDirectory is only an intermediate step until
website generally get more 'interactive'. What would be cool is to have a
standard like:

<http://somewebsite.com/services.json> (or services.xml)

whereby the 'services.json' file would describe what 'actions' and 'data' is
available programatically ('search', 'subscribe', 'contact details', 'product
catalog' etc).

ch, I really appreciate the feedback, this is exactly why I posted this on HN!
Please don't think of my response as being in anyway aggressive or defensive
:-)

