Yahoo’s YQL query language, a SQL-style query language for the web, now supports microformat queries. A given example is finding the address for an event on Upcoming (a Yahoo service), not using the Upcoming API, but using a YQL query to retrieve a vCard microformat in either XML or JSON, using a REST call. But it’s not limited to Yahoo services only! It works on any website with microformats, like, lets say “halans.com”, where my about page contains a vcard. Result: http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql?q=select%20adjunct.item.type%20from%20microformats%20where%20url%3D%27http%3A%2F%2Fwww.halans.com%2Fabout%2Fprofessionally%2F%27%20&format=xml

As Chris Heilman writes over at the Yahoo! Developer Network Blog:

“This will hopefully make it much easier for people to write software that consumes microformats and maybe bring the “chicken” of adding microformats and the egg of finding good uses for them a bit closer together.”

You could now use Yahoo SearchMonkey to find microformats around the web (example searchmonkeyid:com.yahoo.page.uf.hcard or “searchmonkeyid:com.yahoo.page.uf.geo halans“) and then query the microformats inside the SearchMonkey results with YQL.

Category: Microformats, Semantic Web

Tags: Chris Heilman, Yahoo!