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Readium Web Publication Manifest

The Readium Web Publication Manifest is a JSON-based document meant to represent and distribute publications over HTTPS.

It is the primary exchange format used in the Readium Architecture and serves as the main building block for OPDS 2.0.

Editors:

• Hadrien Gardeur

Participate:

• GitHub readium/webpub-manifest
• File an issue

Table of Contents

• Example
• 1. Introduction
  • 1.1. Goals
  • 1.2. Terminology
  • 1.3. Abstract Model
• 2. Syntax
  • 2.1. Sub-Collections
  • 2.2. Metadata
  • 2.3. Links
  • 2.4. The Link Object
• 3. Resources in the Reading Order
• 4. Media Type
• 5. Discovering a Manifest
• 6. Table of Contents
• 7. Cover
• 8. Extensibility
• 9. Packaging a Readium Web Publication
• Appendix A. JSON Schema

Example

{
  "@context": "https://readium.org/webpub-manifest/context.jsonld",
  
  "metadata": {
    "@type": "http://schema.org/Book",
    "title": "Moby-Dick",
    "author": "Herman Melville",
    "identifier": "urn:isbn:978031600000X",
    "language": "en",
    "modified": "2015-09-29T17:00:00Z"
  },

  "links": [
    {"rel": "self", "href": "https://example.com/manifest.json", "type": "application/webpub+json"},
    {"rel": "alternate", "href": "https://example.com/publication.epub", "type": "application/epub+zip"},
    {"rel": "search", "href": "https://example.com/search{?query}", "type": "text/html", "templated": true}
  ],
  
  "readingOrder": [
    {"href": "https://example.com/c001.html", "type": "text/html", "title": "Chapter 1"}, 
    {"href": "https://example.com/c002.html", "type": "text/html", "title": "Chapter 2"}
  ],

  "resources": [
    {"rel": "cover", "href": "https://example.com/cover.jpg", "type": "image/jpeg", "height": 600, "width": 400},
    {"href": "https://example.com/style.css", "type": "text/css"}, 
    {"href": "https://example.com/whale.jpg", "type": "image/jpeg"}, 
    {"href": "https://example.com/boat.svg", "type": "image/svg+xml"}, 
    {"href": "https://example.com/notes.html", "type": "text/html"}
  ]
}

1. Introduction

1.1. Goals

While the Web is the largest collection of interlinked documents ever created, it lacks a mechanism for expressing how a collection of resources, when grouped together can represent a publication.

Publication formats such as EPUB or CBZ/CBR group these documents together using a container format, making them easier to archive or transmit as a whole. But they also break an important promise of the Web: the resources of a publication are not available through HTTP to any client that would like to access them.

W3C has recently provided a definition for a Web Publication:

A Web Publication (WP) is a collection of one or more constituent resources, organized together in a uniquely identifiable grouping, and presented using standard Open Web Platform technologies.

It also provides a definition for a manifest in the context of a Web Publication:

[...] manifest refers to an abstract means to contain information necessary to the proper management, rendering, and so on, of a publication.

The Readium Web Publication Manifest is an attempt to standardize a JSON based manifest format that follows both definitions.

To facilitate the interoperability between EPUB and Web Publications, this document also defines a number of extension points to fully support EPUB specific features.

1.2. Terminology

1.3. Abstract Model

The Readium Web Publication Manifest is based on a hypermedia model inspired by Atom, HAL, Siren and Collection+JSON among others.

Every Readium Web Publication Manifest is a collection that <strong class="rfc">must</strong> contain:

• metadata
• links
• a reading order

2. Syntax

2.1. Sub-Collections

This specification defines two collection roles that are the building blocks of any manifest:

Both collections are compact collections, which means that they contain one or more Link Objects.

All additional collection roles are defined in the Collection Roles registry.

Extensions that are not registered in the registry <strong class="rfc">must</strong> use a URI for their role.

A manifest <strong class="rfc">must</strong> contain a readingOrder sub-collection.

Other resources that are required to render the publication <strong class="rfc">should</strong> be listed in resources.

All resources listed in readingOrder and resources <strong class="rfc">must</strong> indicate their media type using type.

Example 1: Reading order and list of resources

{
  "readingOrder": [
    {"href": "/chapter1", "type": "text/html"},
    {"href": "/chapter2", "type": "text/html"}
  ],
  "resources": [
    {"href": "/style.css", "type": "text/css"},
    {"href": "/image1.jpg", "type": "image/jpeg"}
  ]
}

2.2. Metadata

JSON-LD provides an easy and standard way to extend existing JSON document: through the addition of a context, we can associate keys in a document to Linked Data elements from various vocabularies.

The Web Publication Manifest relies on JSON-LD to provide a context for the metadata object of the manifest.

While JSON-LD is very flexible and allows the context to be defined in-line (local context) or referenced (URI), the Web Publication Manifest restricts context definition strictly to references (URIs) at the top-level of the document.

The Web Publication Manifest defines an initial registry of well-known context documents, which currently includes the following references:

Context documents are all defined and listed in the Context Documents registry.

The Readium Web Publication Manifest has a single requirement in terms of metadata: all publications <strong class="rfc">must</strong> include a title.

In addition all publications <strong class="rfc">should</strong> include a @type key to describe the nature of the publication.

Example 2: Minimal metadata

"metadata": {
  "@type": "http://schema.org/Book",
  "title": "Test Publication"
}

2.3. Links

Links are expressed using the links key that contains one or more Link Objects.

A manifest <strong class="rfc">must</strong> contain at least one link using the self relationship where href is an absolute URI to the canonical location of the manifest.

Example 3: Link to the canonical location of a manifest

"links": [
  {
    "rel": "self",
    "href": "http://example.org/manifest.json",
    "type": "application/webpub+json"
  }
]

A manifest <strong class="rfc">may</strong> also contain other links, such as a alternate link to an EPUB 3.2 version of the publication for example.

Link relations that are currently used in this specification and its extensions are listed in the Link Relations registry.

2.4. The Link Object

The Link Object is a core component of the Readium Web Publication Manifest JSON syntax.

It represents a link to a resource along with a set of metadata associated with that resource.

This specification defines the following keys for this JSON object:

3. Resources in the Reading Order

The readingOrder of a manifest <strong class="rfc">may</strong> contain references to any text, image, video or audio resource that can be opened in a Web browser.

4. Media Type

This specification introduces a dedicated media type value to identify the Readium Web Publication Manifest: application/webpub+json.

All HTTP responses for the manifest <strong class="rfc">must</strong> indicate this media type in their headers.

5. Discovering a Manifest

The Readium Web Publication Manifest <strong class="rfc">may</strong> be referenced by resources included in its readingOrder or resources using a link.

Such links <strong class="rfc">must</strong> include:

• application/webpub+json as the media type of the manifest
• manifest as the relation of the link

Example 4: Link in HTML to a manifest

<link href="manifest.json" rel="manifest" type="application/webpub+json">

Example 5: Link in HTTP headers to a manifest

Link: <http://example.org/manifest.json>; rel="manifest";
         type="application/webpub+json"

6. Table of Contents

A Readium Web Publication Manifest <strong class="rfc">may</strong> contain a reference to a table of contents.

In order to represent a table of contents in the manifest, this specification introduces an additional collection role:

Example 6: Partial TOC for an audiobook

"toc": [
  {
    "href": "track1.mp3#t=71",
    "title": "Part 1 - This World",
    "children": [
      {
        "href": "track1.mp3#t=80",
        "title": "Section 1 - Of the Nature of Flatland"
      },
      {
        "href": "track1.mp3#t=415",
        "title": "Section 2 - Of the Climate and Houses in Flatland"
      },
      {
        "href": "track1.mp3#t=789",
        "title": "Section 3 - Concerning the Inhabitants of Flatland"
      }
    ]
  }
]

As a fallback mechanism, a Readium Web Publication Manifest <strong class="rfc">may</strong> identify an HTML or XHTML resource in readingOrder or resources as a table of contents using the contents link relation.

Example 7: Reference to an HTML resource containing a TOC

{
  "rel": "contents", 
  "href": "contents.html", 
  "type": "text/html"
}

A User Agent <strong class="rfc">may</strong> also rely on the title key included in each Link Object of the readingOrder to extract a minimal table of contents.

The EPUB profile also defines additional collection roles for embedding navigation directly in the manifest.

7. Cover

A Readium Web Publication Manifest <strong class="rfc">may</strong> contain a reference to a cover.

Link Objects in readingOrder, resources or links can be identified as such using the cover link relation.

All Link Objects containing the cover link relation <strong class="rfc">must</strong> reference an image directly. They <strong class="rfc">should</strong> include a height and width to facilitate how they are processed by User Agents.

This specification recommends using one of the following media types: image/jpeg, image/png, image/gif, image/avif or image/svg+xml.

Example 8: Reference to a cover

{
  "rel": "cover", 
  "href": "cover.jpg", 
  "type": "image/jpeg", 
  "height": 600, 
  "width": 400
}

8. Extensibility

The manifest provides multiple extension points:

• additional collection roles using the registry of roles or URIs
• additional metadata using schema.org, terms from the registry of context documents or URIs (for individual terms)
• additional link relations from the IANA link registry or URIs
• additional properties using the registry of properties

In addition to these extension points, this specification defines both a profile registry and a module registry as well.

The initial registry, contains the following profiles:

9. Packaging

A Readium Web Publication may be distributed unpackaged on the Web, but it may also be packaged for easy distribution as a single file. To achieve this goal, this specification defines the Readium Packaging Format (RPF).

Appendix A. JSON Schema

A JSON Schema is available under version control at https://github.com/readium/webpub-manifest/tree/master/schema

For the purpose of validating a Readium Web Publication Manifest, use the following JSON Schema resource: https://readium.org/webpub-manifest/schema/publication.schema.json