RSS CONVERSION SERVICE FOR INTEGRATING WEB

INFORMATION RESOURCES AND HOME NETWORK SYSTEM

Hiroshi Igaki, Hiroyuki Sakamoto and Masahide Nakamura

Department of Computer Science and Systems Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering

Kobe University, 1-1 Rokkodai-cho, Nada-ku, Kobe 657-8501, Japan

Keywords:

Home Network System, RSS, Mashup, Web Service.

Abstract:

Home Network System(HNS), which connects home appliances and sensors to networks, has been researched

actively. HNS makes it possible to remote-control and monitor home appliances. However, use of these

services has been limited to home appliances and sensors in HNS.In this paper, we present integrated services

combining RSS documents and HNS with our RSS conversion service. In our service, the hyperlink in each

item on an RSS document is replaced to a WebAPI of home appliance control. This converted RSS(integrated

RSS) can control home appliances by clicking items in an RSS reader.

1 INTRODUCTION

Ubiquitous and embedded technologies are emerging

widely as new fundamental technological frameworks

for a home network system. Based on the technolo-

gies, many smart devices including sensors and home

appliances in home network system have network ca-

pability to access their functions from other appli-

ances or softwares. With using such devices, various

applications have been being developed. One of the

applications is an appliance integration service. The

integration service provides a user with new added

value by combination of multiple devices in HNS.

An automatic door(Nabtesco Corp., 2008) and a sen-

sor light(Residential Landscape Lighting & Design,

2008) with a human-detect sensor are typical exam-

ples with using multiple devices.

As Web 2.0 technology spreads, mashup services

with higher added value combining the various infor-

mation resources exhibited on the Web have become

popular. Then, we aim at development of more so-

phisticated integration services combining with not

only home appliances but the information resources

on the Web as a next step of HNS integration ser-

vices. For example, ”stock price information service”

which tells a user a certain stock price ﬂuctuation

by combining the alarm device and stock informa-

tion, and ”energy-saving air-conditioner, ventilation

service” which performs optimal opening and closing

of windows, ventilating fans, and air-conditioner con-

trol based on the weather information on the Web. To

integrate home network system and Web information

resources, we use RSS(Berkman Center for Internet

& Society at Harvard Law School, 2007) documents

and HNS-WebAPIs.

In our research, we focus on a

<link>

element in

the RSS document. The link element usually has a hy-

perlink to access detailed information of each

<item>

in the document. By replacing the hyperlink by We-

bAPI of home appliance control(HNS-WebAPI), new

integrated services using both web information re-

sources and home network system can be developed.

In our proposed RSS conversion service, based

on a certain pre-deﬁned conversion rule, replacement

of the hyperlink of adequate items in the RSS doc-

ument is performed. The conversion rule contains a

HNS-WebAPI and an item extractor to extract ade-

quate items in the RSS document. Based on the rule,

our service speciﬁes items in RSS documents, and re-

places a hyperlink of the link element into a HNS-

WebAPI.

In this paper, we explain about our RSS conver-

sion service based on the conversion rule.

131

Igaki H., Sakamoto H. and Nakamura M. (2009).

RSS CONVERSION SERVICE FOR INTEGRATING WEB INFORMATION RESOURCES AND HOME NETWORK SYSTEM.

In Proceedings of the International Conference on e-Business, pages 131-134

DOI: 10.5220/0002194001310134

 SciTePress

2 PRELIMINARY

2.1 Home Network System

A Home Network System(in short, HNS) consists of

one or more networked appliances connected to a

LAN at home. Each networked appliance has a set

of control APIs, so that the user or external software

agents can control the appliance via the network (e.g.,

(DLNA, 2007)(ECHONET Consortium, 2004)).

In this paper, we assume that such control APIs

are exhibited as WebAPIs. The term ”WebAPI” here

indicates an API that can be accessed over HTTP.

(Nakamura et al., 2008) shows examples of WebAPIs

which are exposed by a legacy appliance wrapped in

a Web Service . Hereafter we call such WebAPIs in

HNS HNS-WebAPIs.

2.2 RSS as Web Information Resources

RSS is a Web content syndication format(Berkman

Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School,

2007). Adopting RSS to the information resources

on the Web ,such as blog entries, news headlines,

weather information and TV programs enables users

to access the resources in a standardized way.

In a typical format of an RSS document,

element indicates outline of information

resources, and the

<item>

expresses each informa-

tion item itself. For example, in the case of

an RSS document containing blog entries, name,

URL, and summary of the blog are described in

the

, and each

<item>

indicates each entry.

Then, each

<item>

contains a

<title>

element, sum-

mary(a

element), a hyperlink to the

detailed information (a

<link>

element), and date of

the entry etc.. A user can browsevarious kinds of RSS

documents on the web through an RSS reader(News

On Feeds, 2008). Similarly, many applications can

produce RSS documents to mashup with other re-

sources or web services.

3 INTEGRATION INFORMATION

RESOURCES AND HOME

NETWORK SYSTEM

Recently, very various and worthy information re-

sources such as news headline, weather forecasts,

stock quotations, TV program listings, and Podcast-

ing, etc. are exhibited as RSS documents. We suppose

novel integrated services are realized by combining

these information resources and home appliances. In

this paper, we assume the following services as new

integrated services combining information resources

and home appliances.

• RSS-TV Service

If a user selects a certain TV program under tele-

vising from a TV program listing RSS through an

RSS reader, the program can be watched by the

user’s TV in HNS.

• Podcasting Play Service

In this service, a MP3 Stereo Component plays

a podcasted item selected by the user on RSS

reader.

In the following section, we introduce about our

RSS Conversion Service to realize these kinds of ser-

vice.

4 RSS CONVERSION SERVICE

We focused on the

<link>

element which is sub ele-

ment of the

<item>

in the RSS document in order to

integrate an RSS document and HNS. Originally, the

<link>

element includes a hyperlink to the detailed in-

formation of each information item. A user can read

a title, summary, and published date etc. of the items

in the RSS documents. If the user wants to acquire

more detailed information, he/she moves to URL of

the hyperlink. Therefore, the general RSS reader of-

fers a GUI which a user can travel to the hyperlinked

information by clicking on the title of the item.

Then, we propose an RSS conversion service

which changes the hyperlink in the

<link>

element

into arbitrary HNS-WebAPI like Figure 1. Our ser-

vice enables users to invoke a suitable HNS-WebAPI

by clicking title of a speciﬁc information item. In or-

der to make an RSS document and an HNS-WebAPI

cooperate appropriately,our service uses a conversion

rule which contains search conditions for extraction

Figure 1: RSS Conversion Service.

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132

Table 1: Example of Conversion Rules.

ConversionRule1

TargetElement: category

Search Query: ABC-TV

HNS-WebAPI: http://myHNS/TVService/ch?param0=6

ConversionRule2

TargetElement: category

Search Query: Fuji Network

HNS-WebAPI: http://myHNS/TVService/ch?param0=10

of suitable items in an RSS document and an ade-

quate HNS-WebAPI. In the following section, we de-

note about the conversion rule for our service.

4.1 Conversion Rules

We deﬁne a conversion rule as a combination of an

item extractor extracting adequate items and a HNS-

WebAPI. The item extractor consists of a target ele-

ment and a search query. The target element shows

arbitrary element name included in each

<item>

such

<title>

, etc. in an RSS document.

The search query using regular expressions is given

to ﬁnd adequate items based on the character string in

the target element.

If this item extractor and an HNS-WebAPI as

a conversion rule are given,

<link>

which is sub-

element of each

<item>

in an RSS document is re-

placed to a suitable HNS-WebAPI based on the rule.

A user can invoke the HNS-WebAPI by clicking a ti-

tle of the item on the RSS reader.

Table 1 shows an example of a conversion rule

for the RSS-TV Service. The TV program list-

ing RSS to which the conversion rule is applied

Figure 2: Conversion of Podcasting-RSS in Podcasting Play

Service.

Table 2: A Conversion Rule for Podcasting Play Service.

ConversionRule

TargetElement: enclosure@type

Search Query: audio/mpeg

HNS-WebAPI: http://myHNS/streamMP3.cgi?url=

enclosure@url

includes a TV station name in the

each item. In the conversion rule, a target el-

ement ”category” and a search query ”ABC-TV”

are speciﬁed as an item extractor. Then, a HNS-

WebAPI ”http://myhome/TVService/ch?param0=6”

which sets channel of a TV to 6ch is given in the

rule. By preparing conversion rules with the similar

scheme on other TV programs, every TV programs

and TV WebAPIs which set channel of the TV are

associated.

4.2 Tag Variable for Dynamic

HNS-WebAPI

We deﬁne a tag variable as a variable whose value

can be speciﬁed with any element value or attribute in

<item>

. The tag variable is used for expressing a ﬂex-

ible HNS-WebAPI in a conversion rule. When our

RSS Conversion service replaces data of the

<link>

the tag variable is replaced with data of speciﬁed ele-

ment based on a speciﬁed RSS document.

For example, a Podcasting RSS contains a hyper-

link to an MP3 ﬁle in ”url” attribute of an

element in each item. A MP3 Stereo component We-

bAPI takes url of mp3 ﬁle as an argument. In the con-

version rule of Podcasting Play Service(denoted in 3),

if argument of the HNS-WebAPI is given statically,

only pre-given MP3 ﬁle can be played by the HNS-

WebAPI. To integrate such the RSS document and

the HNS-WebAPI ﬂexibly, url of an MP3 ﬁle must

be given to the MP3 Stereo component WebAPI dy-

namically.

Table 2 is a conversion rule for the Podcasting

Play Service. In this rule, the HNS-WebAPI has a

tag variable ”$enclosure@url$”. Figure 2 shows one

of the

<item>

elements of a podcasting RSS. Like this

ﬁgure, the tag variable ”$enclosure@url$” is replaced

to the url attribute of the enclosure element in the

<item>

5 DISCUSSION

Figure 3 shows our registration UI for creating

conversion rules. This UI program consists of

RSS CONVERSION SERVICE FOR INTEGRATING WEB INFORMATION RESOURCES AND HOME NETWORK

SYSTEM

133

Figure 3: UI for Conversion Rule Registration.

Figure 4: Integrated Services with an RSS reader.

makeRule.html(HTML with JavaScript, LOC:97) and

makeRule.cgi(Perl/CGI, LOC:53).

First, the user enters url of an RSS document

in this registration UI. The UI displays the contents

of inputted RSS document on the upper part of the

screen. The user inputs a target element, a search

query, and a HNS-WebAPI based on the displayed

RSS document. After inputting all conversion rules, a

deﬁnition ﬁle(rule.txt) which contains all rules is cre-

ated by clicking the [makeRule] button.

In the next step, our RSSConverter.cgi(Perl/CGI,

LOC:57) applies the deﬁnition ﬁle containing

rules to a speciﬁed RSS document. The fol-

lowing url is an example of url for getting con-

verted RSS document. Practically, RSS

URL

is an actual url of an original RSS document.

http://myhome/RSSConverter.cgi?rss=RSS

URL&rule=

rule.txt

RSSConverter.cgi applies rule.txt which contains

conversion rules to the RSS document speciﬁed by

RSS

URL, and creates a new converted RSS docu-

ment. Tag variables given to the HNS-WebAPI in the

rules are also converted, simultaneously. As shown

in the Figure 4, a user can browse the converted RSS

document, and execute the HNS-WebAPI speciﬁed in

the conversion rules by clicking each

<item>

element.

Recently, RSS processing services like Yahoo

Pipes which can aggregate multiple RSS documents

and extract required items are being widely devel-

oped. Therefore, information resources to which our

RSS conversion service can apply will increase fur-

ther.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This research was partially supported by: the Japan

Ministry of Education, Culture,Sports,Science and

Technology, Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)

(No.21700077, No.20700027).

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blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss.

DLNA (2007). Digital Living Network Alliance. http://

www.dlna.org.

ECHONET Consortium (1997-2004). http://

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Nabtesco Corp. (2008). Automatic entrance system.

http://nabco.nabtesco.com/english/door

index.asp.

Nakamura, M., Tanaka, A., Igaki, H., Tamada, H., and ichi

Matsumoto, K. (2008). Constructing home network

systems and integrated services using legacy home ap-

pliances and web services. International Journal of

Web Services Research, 5:82–98.

News On Feeds (2008). List of news aggregators.

http://www.newsonfeeds.com/faq/aggregators.

Residential Landscape Lighting & Design (2008). Home

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systems. http://www.residential-landscape-lighting-

design.com/home

lighting automation.htm.

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