[whatwg] JSON Playlist Format

[Silvia Pfeiffer]

On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 1:17 AM, Zachary Ozer <zach at longtailvideo.com> wrote:
> Hi WHATWG,
>
> We've been getting some traffic on our forums from users wondering
> about JSON playlist formats. Specifically, because we aren't
> supporting XML playlists in our player in HTML5 mode (setting the
> Access-Control-Allow-Origin headers would be impossible for most of
> our users), they're looking for a JavaScript-friendly way to
> encapsulate their playlists.
>
> A very cursory search turned up JSPF
> (http://wiki.xiph.org/JSPF_Draft), but it appears to be in draft. Are
> y'all aware of any other formats, either in draft or that have been
> released? If no, any idea why no one's done it already?


Probably because an XML format is sufficient for most uses. I've seen
XSPF used in many places - a list is here http://wiki.xiph.org/XSPF
and more complete here: http://www.xspf.org/applications/ .

However, if you want to use XSPF in JSON, it looks like JSPF is the
way to go. I've also found this: http://gonze.com/xspfgate/ which is a
conversion service from XSPF to JSPF and there's also this
https://github.com/jchris/xspf-to-jspf-parser/blob/master/xspf_parser_runner.html
. But it seems most of the discussion/development about JSFP was in
2008 when Chris Anderson wanted it for his grabb.it company (which
doesn't seem to have survived).

If you have a need for JSON and seeing that XSPF is a widely used
format for playlists, it seems to me using JSPF is the right way
forward. Also, as per your concerns, JSPF doesn't need any
specification of its own, since it's just a different representation
of XSPF IMHO.

Cheers,
Silvia.