Hello,
From our experience with the APIs of the big players in the event
listing market (Upcoming, Zvents, Eventful, TicketMaster, etc.), it is
evident there is no standard format being used to exchange event
information behind the scenes.
Each API arbitrarily assigns its own naming scheme, date formats and
data structure. We’ve had to pick up the slack at Localist by
developing customized parsers to retrieve and standardize the
information for each service.
We’d like to start a discussion with interested people in the industry
about creating a standardized data interchange format.
We’ve already created a preliminary standard that can easily work with
all existing services, along with an explanation of how it complements
hCalendar:
http://dev.localist.com/~myke/eventformat.pdf
You can check out some example RAW XMLs too:
http://dev.localist.com/~myke/eml_vfest.txt
http://dev.localist.com/~myke/eml_simple.txt
We know this community is filled with ridiculously smart people — some
who may be interested in taking part in this discussion. If you, or
anyone you know would like to be involved, don't hesitate to send me
an e-mail.
Thanks
Mykel Nahorniak
Localist.com
P: 703-626-1528
E: myke(a)localist.com