Atom Publishing Protocol framework for Ruby 0.5.0

Atom Publishing Protocol framework for Rubys goal is to make adopting Atom Publishing Protocol(APP) support in web applications as easy as it can be. This is to be reached by implementing a framework that handles the protocol-level duties for the programmer, while not making any requirements for the site design. Details of the project are laid down in a roadmap.

The way that this framework realizes this functionality is by implementing a base class for each back-end. At the moment there is only one back-end, for Ruby on Rails. The base classes then expect that the users application responds to a certain interface that makes the content information storing the responsibility of the application.

While implementing the framework Im going to follow two principles, simplicity and generality. Simplicity in that sense that the framework only does what it needs to do, nothing else, thus staying out of the way of the developer, laying down as few constraints on the application as possible.

Generality principle follows on the same track. As the overhead from using the framework is in the minimum, the field of application gets wider. From technical point of view the generality will be helped by multiple back-ends that enable the use of framework in many different environments.

The APP is currently an Internet-Draft and hence most likely will change in near future. For this, it is better to keep the framework as simple as possible so that it can be refactored with minimum effort.

The work for this project is freely available(MIT licensed) from this website. I am writing this framework as a part of my final thesis at the Tampere University of Technology, Finland.