XML Hacks

I see by the fact that my complementary copy arrived today that XML Hacks has hit the stores. This makes me incredibly pleased as my two contributed hacks mean that this is the most I’ve ever had in print, and that’s like, proper writing, not this new-fangled web malarkey.
My two hacks are #64 (“Identify Yourself with FOAF”) and #93 (“Use Cocoon to Create a Well-Formed View of a Web Page, Then Scrape It For Data”). Both are RDF flavoured. The first is basically an edited version of my XML.com article, “Introduction to FOAF“, while the second is an original piece that provides a lightning introduction to Cocoon then shows how to create a simple web service that will scrape RDF metadata from a web page using a combination of HTML Tidy, XSLT and some rummaging around in the head element.
Kudos to Michael Fitzgerald for pulling together a book that contains such a wide range of useful hacks, and having the patience to do it whilst working with a number of very, very busy people!