New IETF Specification for Exchanging Linking Information

In July 2022, the IETF has published a new specification that was developed with the help of StandICT. The specification is RFC 9264, "Linkset: Media Types and a Link Relation Type for Link Sets." Here's the specification's abstract:

This specification defines two formats and associated media types for representing sets of links as standalone documents. One format is based on JSON, and the other is aligned with the format for representing links in the HTTP "Link" header field. This specification also introduces a link relation type to support the discovery of sets of links.

Here's the specification's introduction which provides a motivation for the work:

Resources on the Web often use typed Web Links (as specified by RFC 8288), either (1) embedded in resource representations -- for example, using the <link> element for HTML documents or (2) conveyed in the HTTP "Link" header field for documents of any media type. In some cases, however, providing links in this manner is impractical or impossible, and delivering a set of links as a standalone document is preferable.

Therefore, this specification defines two formats for representing sets of Web Links and their attributes as standalone documents. One serializes links in the same format as the format used in the HTTP "Link" header field, and the other serializes links in JSON. It also defines associated media types to represent sets of links, and the "linkset" relation type to support the discovery of any resource that conveys a set of links as a standalone document.

Find the full specification here: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9264.html