Activity microformat

The definitive source for this document is the documentation for the 'bitfrost.update.microformat' package, which can be found at http://dev.laptop.org/git?p=users/cscott/sugar-update-control;a=blob;f=bitfrost/update/microformat.py and by running pydoc bitfrost.update.microformat on an XO.

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Overview

Activity information is embedded in HTML/XHTML/XML pages using a semantic microformat. Utilities such as Software update in the Sugar Control Panel can parse this information to determine that a newer activity version is available and download it.

CSS for microformat

The following CSS rules pull out the desired information.

Repository/group information for related activities is denoted by the CSS selector:

 #olpc-activity-group-name

which provides a "short name" for the group, and:

 #olpc-activity-group-desc

which provides a slightly longer description. As indicated by the fact that these are matches on the 'id' attribute, they should match exactly once. These attributes are optional, and are not expected to be included in pages describing updates for an individual activity.

Each block of activity information is denoted by the selector:

 .olpc-activity-info

All information within that block describes a single available version of an activity, so the following selectors should match at most once within the block.

The activity id, which should be unique among all activities, is denoted by the contents of the element identified by the selector:

 .olpc-activity-info .olpc-activity-id

The version number is denoted by the contents of the element identified by the selector:

 .olpc-activity-info .olpc-activity-version

The version URL is denoted by the contents of the href attribute of the element identified by the selector:

  .olpc-activity-info .olpc-activity-url *[href]

An example:

  <table class="olpc-activity-info">
  <tr>
  <td>Browse</td>
  <td class="olpc-activity-id"
      style="display:none;">org.laptop.WebActivity</td>
  <td class="olpc-activity-version">54</td>
  <td class="olpc-activity-url"><a href="Browse-54.xo">download!</a></td>
  </td>
  </table>

Another example can be found at: http://dev.laptop.org/~cscott/bundles/firefox.html

Activity microformat on this wiki

Software updater consults activity group pages on this wiki, such as Activities/G1G1 and Activities/G1G1/8.2 and reads the activity microformat information in them to determine if newer versions of activities are available.

Activity maintainers should use the template {{Activity-oneline}} to provide information for these activity group pages. This template presents information about your activity using the correct CSS for this microformat. You can either embed the template directly in an activity group page, or put the information in a fragment such as Activities/Browse (latest) and transclude this on activity group pages using

Other templates such as {{Project-summary}} also generate the correct CSS for this microformat.