Wiki on a Stick Interchange Format is the preferred format for exporting full WoaS data into a single file and share it with whoever you like.

WSIF format is similar to MIME email attachments format; each line comes like an email header definition, as in following example:

header.name: header-value

All WSIF content must be ASCII, so header-value must be ECMA-escaped when necessary; this corresponds to escaping slashes "\" to "\\" and any UTF-8 sequence to the corresponding "\u0000" string, where 0000 is the lowercase hexadecimal value of the UTF-8 character (like in ECMAScript).

WSIF files can contain custom headers, given that the following namespaces are currently reserved for official WSIF format support:

• wsif
• woas

For example you could define a new namespace for header definitions called custom:

It is up to you then to parse such header-value couples and give them proper representation.

A line starting with two dashes (--) introduces an inline boundary, which is a properly encoded snippet.

Example boundary:

my-random-id must be a (usually random) string unique inside the boundary content, but it does not need to be unique inside the whole WSIF file, which must be read sequentially (like in a state machine).

The wsif. namespace currently defines only an information header:

• wsif.version - WSIF format version into which content is offered
• wsif.generator - program/library used to generate WSIF content

Version 1.1.0 and above are currently supported.

The woas. namespace defines general WoaS content properties and specific WoaS pages; the following headers are defined for general context:

• woas.version - version of WoaS used to produce the WSIF file
• woas.pages - total count of WoaS pages stored inside WSIF file

The following are header definitions specific for WoaS pages:

• woas.page.title - ECMA-escaped page title; this header has a special meaning because it is the page start marker inside the state machine; it is suggested that WSIF implementations write it as first header for page definition stanzas;
• woas.page.attributes - a positive integer value in decimal format specifying the page attributes;
• woas.page.last_modified - a positive integer value in decimal format representing seconds lasted from the UTC epoch up to last modified time; this header is defined only if data is available from WoaS;
• woas.page.length - content length of the inline snippet; only inline files define it; this is not the decoded page length but the length of the content inside the inline boundaries;
• woas.page.original_length - real page length as seen by WoaS; it is currently defined only for encrypted pages;
• woas.page.encoding - snippet encoding format, see the Encoding section below;
• woas.page.disposition - tells whether page is inline or external;
• woas.page.boundary - string used for inline boundary recognition (without leading dashes); this header is specified only for inline snippets;
• woas.page.disposition.filename - filename used for external page content, not ECMA-escaped; defined only with external pages;
• woas.page.mime - mime type of external pages which have a defined mime type, like images for example;

All headers are mandatory (under their specific state definition branch), except last_modified and original_length.

The woas.page.encoding header can contain one of the following values:

• 8bit/plain - data is ASCII text which can use 8bits to represent characters; only ASCII text should be used and not UTF-8;
• ecma/plain - data is ECMA-escaped UTF-8 text;
• 8bit/base64 - data is base64-encoded binary data;
• text/wsif - data is WSIF (currently used only for external WSIF pages)

Pages or header values are encoded in ecma/plain format when UTF-8 sequences are found inside the value string, otherwise 8bit/plain is used; 8bit/base64 is instead used for binary files or encrypted pages.

WSIF format is pretty straightforward to produce or interpret, however please consider the following facts:

• woas.page.disposition.filename must be plain ASCII (this limitation might be removed in future versions of the format) and should be a relative filename;
• it is safe to embed a WSIF file inside another, given that boundaries are properly implemented

WoaS project offers an official PHP library (libwsif) for reading/writing WSIF files, as well as a documented example.