[whatwg] Was is considered to use JSON-LD instead of creating application/microdata+json?

[Ian Hickson]

On Wed, 8 Aug 2012, Markus Lanthaler wrote:
> 
> I was wondering whether it was considered to use JSON-LD [2] instead of 
> creating application/microdata+json. The resulting output would be more 
> or less the same.

It wasn't. What would be the purpose of doing so?

The only reason there's a MIME type at all (rather than just using JSON's 
directly) was to enable filtering of copy-and-paste and drag-and-drop 
payloads; would JSON-LD enable that also?


> For example the following application/microdata+json document:
> 
> {
>   "items": [
>     {
>       "id": "http://example.com/id1",
>       "type": [ "http://example.com/type1" ],
>       "properties": {
>         "property1": [ "value1" ],
>         "property2": [
>           {
>             "id": "http://example.com/id2",
>             "type": [ 
>               "http://example.com/type2", 
>               "http://example.com/type3"
>             ],
>             "properties": {
>               "property3": [ "http://example.com/value3" ]
>             }
>           }
>         ]
>       }
>     }
>   ]
> }
> 
> Could be expressed in JSON-LD as
> 
> {
>   "@graph": [
>     {
>       "@id": "http://example.com/id1",
>       "@type": [ "http://example.com/type1" ],
>       "property1": [ "value1" ],
>       "property2": [
>         {
>           "@id": "http://example.com/id2",
>           "@type": [ 
>             "http://example.com/type2", 
>             "http://example.com/type3"
>           ],
>           "properties": {
>             "property3": [ { "@id": "http://example.com/value3" } ]
>           }
>         }
>       ]
>     }
>   ]
> }
> 
> Or, by aliasing JSON-LD's keywords even as which is almost exactly the same
> as the application/microdata+json counterpart:
> 
> {
>   "@context": {
>     "id": "@id",
>     "type": "@type",
>     "items": "@graph"
>   },
>   "items": [
>     {
>       "id": "http://example.com/id1",
>       "type": [ "http://example.com/type1" ],
>       "property1": [ "value1" ],
>       "property2": [
>         {
>           "id": "http://example.com/id2",
>           "type": [ 
>             "http://example.com/type2", 
>             "http://example.com/type3"
>           ],
>           "properties": {
>             "property3": [ { "@id": "http://example.com/value3" } ]
>           }
>         }
>       ]
>     }
>   ]
> }

That seems like it is strictly more complicated (trivially so, but still). 
What is the advantage?

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'