Journal embedding through JSON

[slothman]

Title
Journal embedding through JSON

Short, concise description of the idea
Allow access to the content of your LiveJournal through JSON, so people can embed it in their web sites through JavaScript.

Full description of the idea
JSON is a lightweight means for passing data through JavaScript. Making LiveJournal posts available through JSON would allow users to customize the way they embed their LiveJournal in other pages without placing a load on their web server. (The current method simply inlines the journal's exact style via document.write(), which doesn't work in XHTML.) Del.icio.us have already demonstrated this kind of feature.

For example, this would make it possible to place a list of the titles of your most recent posts in a page, and have those link to the full text of each post.

An ordered list of benefits

• Embedding in HTML will become much more flexible, allowing end users to create a wide variety of scripts without requiring vetting by LiveJournal personnel.
• Embedding in XHTML will become possible through means other than frames.
• Friends would be able to see protected entries, since the cookie could be read out of their browser; a web server based solution would be unable to do this.
  

An ordered list of problems/issues involved

• The interface between LJ's internal database format and the JSON converter will require maintenance.
• Badly behaved scripts may hammer the JSON converter and require some form of throttling.