Status: Optional companion Working Draft.
This profile distributes event links. It does not replace the core document or require organizers to publish feeds. A service SHOULD offer Atom for interoperable OpenAjang subscriptions; RSS or another interface MAY be offered additionally. A service claiming this profile MUST follow the requirements here and RFC 4287. No new XML vocabulary or event-JSON wrapper is introduced.
Serve UTF-8 Atom as application/atom+xml. Include a permanent feed id, title,
updated, feed author identifying the service, and a self link. The feed author
is not an assertion that the service organized the events. Include a human HTML
alternate link when available. Feed updated tracks significant feed changes,
including entry changes or removals; it MUST NOT advance on unchanged rebuilds.
Each entry describes one event and MUST include:
id equal to the effective OpenAjang Event ID; preserve it across revisions;title and a plain-text summary useful without OpenAjang support;updated, the directory’s significant entry-modification instant;alternate link with type
application/vnd.openajang+json to a direct JSON Document URL;alternate text/html link to the canonical human-facing Event URL.Repeated identical JSON links are one candidate. Different JSON link targets are
ambiguous and MUST NOT be guessed between. Typed JSON links MAY return the core’s
application/json fallback. The core’s provisional media-type status applies.
The entry summary SHOULD include the event date, timezone where relevant, place or attendance mode, registration situation, and any cancellation or postponement. Event information comes from the validated document. Summary text is not a substitute for structured facts. A title or summary edited by the directory MUST NOT be written back to the organizer’s event without authorization.
published, when present, is when this service first published the entry. It is
not the event start. Entry updated changes when the service incorporates a
material event revision or makes a significant editorial change. It is not a copy
of organizer updated_at, not a retrieval timestamp, and not a global conflict
resolution clock. Keep the organizer timestamp in the event document.
Relative Atom links, if consumed, follow RFC 4287/XML Base rules; this differs from the deliberately restricted HTML discovery rules in the core. Producers SHOULD emit absolute links. Consumers MUST apply network safety checks to resolved feed links. Do not execute XML external entities or fetch external DTDs.
Consumers fetch and conditionally refresh the feed using HTTP. They may display its summaries immediately. An OpenAjang-aware consumer resolves the typed JSON link, validates it, and MUST verify that its effective Event ID exactly equals the entry ID. An ID mismatch is a profile error; do not attach it as an update. The event document, not the summary, supplies structured attendance and registration.
A third-party feed’s link or a copied ID does not prove organizer authority. Retain directory provenance separately from source provenance. If a document link is not established by the Event URL, report its authority as unverified according to consumer policy. A conflicting source MUST NOT silently overwrite a known event.
A directory MUST refresh a source according to its own documented freshness policy before claiming a new source change. A consumer SHOULD refresh saved events directly independently of future feed membership. A consumer that only reads this feed must not promise reliable saved-event cancellation delivery: bounded feeds can drop items.
An event update keeps the entry ID and advances entry updated. Cancellation is
an update: retain the entry where practical, visibly label cancellation, and link
to the cancelled JSON. A feed tombstone MUST NOT represent cancellation.
This profile is a bounded discovery feed, not a complete directory snapshot or a lossless change log. Omission means neither cancellation nor deletion. A directory SHOULD keep recent changed/cancelled entries available long enough for its intended polling audience and SHOULD order entries by most recent significant update. It SHOULD document feed size and retention. No finite retention guarantees delivery to consumers absent longer than that period.
RFC 6721 tombstones and RFC 5005 paging/archives are deferred optional capabilities. If later adopted, a tombstone removes this directory’s entry; it does not establish the organizer’s event status or authorize deleting copies from other sources.
The package includes examples/directory.atom and examples/directory.rss.
Their example.org Document URLs illustrate future public hosting and are not
live endpoints. Core event documents remain separate from the feed.
A service may produce RSS 2.0 with stable guid isPermaLink="false" equal to the
Event ID, human <link>, useful <description>, and an Atom-namespaced typed JSON
atom:link within each item. This is an OpenAjang convention, not a guarantee of
ordinary RSS-reader behavior. RSS pubDate records publication, not event start;
lastBuildDate tracks channel changes, not per-item modification time. Do not
rewrite pubDate on every event edit or generate a new GUID to force notification.
A dedicated consumer can refresh source documents despite this limitation.