FW: Updated Page: Changed Page Spec

[Aaron Swartz <aswartz@swartzfam.com>]

I've updated the changedPage spec, allowing web servers to simply and easily
notify each other when a page has changed. The new spec is much simpler, and
uses CGI-style encoding instead of XML-RPC. I've also set up a demonstration
application, which emails you when it receives a changedPage notification.
Below is a sample of the results of the application, showing the new spec
and information on how to use the demonstration.

Comments graciously appreciated,

    [ Aaron Swartz | me@aaronsw.com | http://www.aaronsw.com ]

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  URL: http://my.theinfo.org/changed/
Title: Changed Page Spec

*Changed Page Spec

by Aaron Swartz[1] and Dan Lyke[2]

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changedPage is a proposed protocol to allow websites to notify each
other when a page is updated. It was first proposed to the Syndication
List[3] on eGroups[4] and all discussion should be handled there.
Currently the proposal is in very rough form and is subject to change
at any time.

Interested parties should email either Aaron Swartz[5] or the
Syndication List[6].

**Specification

A changedPage responder is a URL which accepts HTTP POST requests of
the form:
 
 url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theinfo.org

where http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theinfo.org is the URL-encoded URL that has
been updated. In this case, the URL is http://www.theinfo.org.
Conforming implementations should support the inclusion of additional
attributes, seperated by an amperstand, as follows:
 
 url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theinfo.org&specialkeyword=woohoo

Additional attributes should be allowed before or after the URL.
Implementations should ignore attributes they don't understand. The
order of the attributes is not significant.

If this sounds familiar, it should be. This is how HTML forms are
encoded, as described in the HTML spec[9].

**Demonstration

The Info Network operates a demonstration application for changedPage.
If you comply with the standard described above, you can attempt to
send a changedPage notification to:
 
 http://my.theinfo.org/changed/email/?email_address_goes_here

Where email_address_goes_here is replaced with your email address. The
server will send you an email notification that the page has updated,
along with a version of the page converted to text. This is an example
of the service.

[1] http://swartzfam.com/aaron/
[2] http://flutterby.com/danlyke/
[4] http://egroups.com/group/syndication
[5] http://egroups.com
[6] mailto:aaron@theinfo.org
[7] mailto:syndication@egroups.com
[8] http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/interact/forms.html#h-17.13

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This is a demonstration of the changedPage specification provided by
the Info Network. For more information visit:

http://my.theinfo.org/changed/

For questions or complaints, please email:

webmaster@theinfo.org