h-entry

<entry-title>h-entry</entry-title> Tantek Çelik (Editor)

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h-entry is a simple, open format for episodic or datestamped content on the web. h-entry is often used with content intended to be syndicated, e.g. blog posts. h-entry is one of several open microformat draft standards suitable for embedding data in HTML/HTML5.

h-entry is the microformats2 update to hAtom's "hentry". For an update to "hfeed" see h-feed.

Per CC0, to the extent possible under law, the editors have waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to this work. In addition, as of 2024-11-28, the editors have made this specification available under the Open Web Foundation Agreement Version 1.0.

Example

Here is a simple blog post example:

<article class="h-entry">
  <h1 class="p-name">Microformats are amazing</h1>
  <p>Published by <a class="p-author h-card" href="http://example.com">W. Developer</a>
     on <time class="dt-published" datetime="2013-06-13 12:00:00">13<sup>th</sup> June 2013</time>
  
  <p class="p-summary">In which I extoll the virtues of using microformats.</p>
  
  <div class="e-content">
    <p>Blah blah blah</p>
  </div>
</article>

Get started

The class h-entry is a root class name that indicates the presence of an h-entry.

p-name, p-author, dt-published and the other h-entry property classnames listed below define properties of the h-entry.

See microformats2-parsing to learn more about property classnames.

Properties

h-entry properties, inside an element with class h-entry:

• p-name - entry name/title
• p-summary - short entry summary
• e-content - full content of the entry
• dt-published - when the entry was published
• dt-updated - when the entry was updated
• p-author - who wrote the entry, optionally embedded h-card(s)
• p-category - entry categories/tags
• u-url - entry permalink URL
• u-uid - unique entry ID
• p-location - location the entry was posted from, optionally embed h-card, h-adr, or h-geo

The following experimental properties are in use in the wild (published and consumed) but are not yet part of the spec:

• p-comment - optionally embedded (or nested?) h-cite(s), each of which is a comment on/reply to the parent h-entry. See comment-brainstorming (example)
• u-syndication - URL(s) of syndicated copies of this post. The property equivalent of rel-syndication (example)
• u-in-reply-to - the URL which the h-entry is considered reply to (i.e. doesn’t make sense without context, could show up in comment thread), optionally an embedded h-cite (reply-context) (example)
• u-like-of - the URL which the h-entry is considered a “like” (favorite, star) of. Optionally an embedded h-cite (example)
• u-repost-of - the URL which the h-entry is considered a “repost” of. Optionally an embedded h-cite.

The following properties are proposed additions based on various existing link preview markup conventions which are not yet commonly used in the wild (Related: link-preview-brainstorming)

• u-photo - a representative photo or image for the entry, e.g. primary photo for an article or subject-cropped photo, suitable for use in a link-preview (example)
• u-audio - consider special u- parsing rules for <audio>
• u-video - consider special u- parsing rules for <video>

All properties are optional.

Status

h-entry is a microformats.org draft specification. Public discussion on h-entry takes place on h-entry-feedback, the #microformats irc channel on irc.freenode.net, and microformats-new mailing list.

h-entry is ready to use and implemented in the wild, but for backwards compatibility you should also mark h-entries up as classic hAtom entries.

Property Details

This section is a stub.

p-location

p-location has been re-used from h-event.

FAQ

p-name of a note

• What is the p-name of a note?
  • A few options, from simplest to most detailed.
    • same as the p-content/e-content property.
    • same as the title element on the note permalink post page. When publishing a note on its own permalink post page, the contents of the note are likely abbreviated for the title of the page. The same abbreviation can be used for the p-name.
    • first sentence of the p-content/e-content property. It may be better for syndication and link-preview purposes to provide just the first sentence of the note as the p-name. Similarly if only a portion of the content is syndicated to other sites, that portion can be marked up as the p-summary.

venue an entry was posted from

• How do you indicate a named venue where an entry was posted from? Like a restaurant or park.
  • Use an embedded h-card microformat on a p-location property value.

address an entry was posted from

• How do you indicate the address where an entry was posted from? Like a restaurant or park.
  • If the address is just part of a named venue, see above, use an h-card
  • Otherwise use an embedded h-adr microformat on a p-location property value.

lat long an entry was posted from

• How do you indicate the latitude and longitude of where an entry was posted from?
  • If the location has a name in addition to latitude and longitude, see above, use an h-card
  • Otherwise if there is an address in addition to latitude and longitude, see above, use an h-adr
  • Otherwise use an embedded h-geo microformat on a p-location property value.

dt-published property and HTML5 time element

• Does the dt-published property need to be a time element?
  • The dt-published property should be a <time> element so that you can take advantage of HTML5's "datetime" property.
  • This lets you specify a human-readable date in the value of the attribute, and the ISO8601 machine-readable date in the "datetime" property.

what is the bare minimum list of required properties on an h-entry

• What is the bare minimum list of required properties on an h-entry?
  • No properties are explicitly required, but in practice a h-entry should have the following properties at a minimum for consumers:

• name (can be implied)
• url (can be implied)
• published

• What properties should an h-entry have in addition to the bare minimum?
  • Beyond the bare minimum, a typical h-entry should have the following as well:

• content (or summary at least) - especially for structured content. For a plain text note, the content/summary (whichever is used) should be the same as the name, otherwise it will be implied from the text content of the root element.
• name - for explicitly named/titled entries. Otherwise the entry is assumed to be a "title-less" note (like a tweet).
• author - including a nested h-card

Examples in the wild

Real world in the wild examples:

• ... add uses of h-entry you see in the wild here.
• David John Mead marks up his profile, blog posts and comments with h-card, h-entry and h-cite on davidjohnmead.com
• Brian Suda marks up his blog posts up with h-entry and h-card on optional.is
• Ashton McAllen marks up his blog posts, reposts, comments and likes with h-entry, h-card and h-cite on acegiak.net
• Emma Kuo marks up her blog posts and notes with h-entry and h-card on notenoughneon.com
• Scott Jenson marks up his blog posts with h-entry and h-card on jenson.org
• Emily McAllen marks up her blog posts with h-entry and h-card on blackwoolholiday.com
• Ryan Barrett marks up his blog posts, notes, replies and likes with h-entry and h-card on snarfed.org
• Barry Frost marks up his notes with h-entry, h-card and h-cite on barryfrost.com
• Amber Case marks up her profile, blog posts, replies and notes with h-entry and h-card on caseorganic.com
• Johannes Ernst marks up his blog posts with h-entry on upon2020.com
• Michiel de Jong marks up his profile and notes with h-entry and h-card on michielbdejong.com
• Mike Taylor marks up his profile and blog posts with h-card and h-entry on bear.im
• Erin Jo Ritchey marks up her profile, posts and comments using h-card, h-entry and h-cite with idno on erinjo.is
• Jeena Paradies marks up his profile, blog posts, notes and comments using h-card, h-entry and h-cite on jeena.net
• Andy Sylvester marks up his profile, blog posts and comments using h-card and h-entry on andysylvester.com (note: as of 2014-03-13 using h-entry for comments instead of correct h-cite --bw 14:44, 13 March 2014 (UTC))
• Chloe Weil marks up her blog posts with h-entry on chloeweil.com
• Christophe Ducamp marks up his blog posts and profile with h-entry and h-card on christopheducamp.com
• Glenn Jones marks up his blog posts, notes, replies, profile and comments with h-entry, h-card and h-cite on glennjones.net
• Marcus Povey marks up his blog posts and profile with h-entry and h-card on marcus-povey.co.uk
• Matthias Pfefferle marks up his blog posts, comments and profile with h-card, h-cite and h-entry on notizblog.org
• Kyle Mahan marks up his profile and notes with h-card and h-entry on kylewm.com
• Okinawan-lyrics marks up his posts with h-entry and h-card (example)
• App.net marks up profile pages and permalink pages with h-entry as of 2013-08-06 (example)
• The Twitter archive browser UI uses h-entry and h-card internally, unfortunately it’s not exposed as HTML in static files anywhere
• Brett Comnes marks up his posts with h-entry and h-card (example)
• Ben Werdmuller marks up his posts with h-card and h-entry, u-in-reply-to and u-like (example)
• Sandeep Shetty marks his posts up with h-card and h-entry, as well as draft u-in-reply-to and experimental u-like properties (example)
• spreadly marks up share permalink pages with h-entry, as well as minimal h-cards and experimental p-like properties (example)
• Laurent Eschenauer marks up his posts with h-entry (example)
• Tom Morris marks up his posts using h-entry (example)
• Numerous newer W3C specs, e.g.
  • CSS Values and Units Module Level 3 - 2013-04-04
  • CSS Conditional Rules Module Level 3 - 2013-04-04
  • CSS Paged Media Module Level 3 - 2013-03-14
  • CSS Counter Styles Level 3 - 2013-02-21
• SemPress is a WordPress theme that supports h-card, h-feed/h-entry.
• The Pastry Box Project use h-card and h-entry markup on their homepage and individual thoughts pages
• Aaron Parecki uses h-entry to mark up notes, e.g. 2012/230/reply/1.
• Tantek Çelik uses h-entry on his home page, as well as h-entry on all post permalinks, e.g. 2012-243 post, with rel-prev/rel-next (if applicable) to indicate prev/next posts
• Barnaby Walters uses h-entry on all notes and articles, as well as nested within notes as reply contexts example and comments example.

Validating

• indiewebify.me h-entry validator parses h-entry markup, finds common errors and makes suggestions for things to add, with code samples
• Shrewdness h-entry/h-feed validator shows how shrewdness interprets+displays h-entries, with original source and interim formats, works for single h-entries and feed pages

Main article: validators

Test and validate microformats2 markup in general with:

• https://pin13.net/mf2/ - enter your markup directly
• https://pin13.net/ - enter a URL to a page to test where it says "Microformats Parser"

Backward Compatibility

Publisher Compatibility

For backward compatibility, you may wish to use classic hAtom classnames in addition to the more future-proof h-entry properties, for example:

<div class="h-entry hentry">
  <h1 class="p-name entry-title">My great blog post</h1>
</div>

Parser Compatibility

Microformats parsers SHOULD detect classic properties only if a classic root class name is found and parse them as microformats2 properties.

If an "h-entry" is found, don't look for an "hentry" on the same element.

Compat root class name: hentry
Properties: (parsed as p- plain text unless otherwise specified):

• entry-title - parse as p-name
• entry-summary - parse as p-summary
• entry-content - parse as e-content
• published - parse as dt-
• updated - parse as dt-
• author - including compat root vcard in the absence of h-card
• category

Compat FAQ

What about rel bookmark

Also asked as: Why use an h-entry u-url u-uid for permalinks when I have rel=bookmark?

A: tl;dr: use class="u-url u-uid" instead of rel=bookmark for post permalinks because it's simpler (fewer attributes), and works better across contexts (permalink page, recent posts on home page, collection of posts on archive pages).

rel=bookmark was the old hAtom way of marking up permalinks. Since then two factors have contributed to reducing use of rel inside microformats:

• rel by typically* document scoped in HTML5 - thus making it inappropriate for use in microformats that are aggregated, e.g. a collection of posts on a home page or in monthly archives.
• it is easier to always use class names for properties. When formats use two (or more!) attributes in HTML to specify properties, confusion results in lower data quality (of the markup and thus the stuff that is marked up). Thus per the microformats principle of simplicity, in microformats2 we only use class names for properties.

* even though rel=bookmark in particular is article-element / sectioning scoped in HTML5[1], it's a detail that typical authors are not going to remember, and thus it's not good to depend on it for any kind of format.

Why rename entry-title entry-summary entry-content

The entry-* classnames in classic hAtom were prefixed as such due to concerns about vocabulary overlap with the title (as in job title, completely separate semantic) property in hCard and the summary property in hCalendar (see: hAtom FAQ).

Following the simplicity principle, in microformats2, the aforementioned vagueness of title is dealt with by removing it. As name is now used consistently across all vocabularies as the property which “names” the microformat, it makes sense to use it to mark up the name of a post.

Likewise, adding entry- to summary doesn’t add any useful information, and in practice there have been no problems with blog post summaries overlapping with entry summaries, so it makes sense to simplify to summary. The same applies to entry-content simplified to content.

See also: 2012-08-30 IRC conversation.

Related Work

Work that re-uses or builds upon h-entry:

• Mailpile Open Message Format is using h-entry with structured properties, e.g. p-author h-card.

Background

This work is based on the existing hAtom microformat, and extensive selfdogfooding in the indie web camp community.

See Also

• h-feed
• microformats2
• microformats2-parsing
• h-geo
• hCard