Microdata - nesting and multiple itemref

Question

We are using microdata on our website, and I'm wondering if multiple items can refer to another...I'll explain what I'm trying to do.

On a blog page you could have both blog posts and authors associated with an organisation, like this:

<article itemref="organisation" itemtype="http://schema.org/BlogPosting" 
    itemscope>
    <p class="date"><meta content="2014-01-16" itemprop="datePublished" />16-01-2014</p>
    <p>by 
        <span itemref="organisation" itemtype="http://schema.org/Person" 
            itemscope itemprop="author">
            <meta content="Joe Bloggs" itemprop="name" />Joe</span>
    </p>
    <h2 itemprop="name" >Awesome content here</h2>
    <a href="http://www.example.com/awesome-content-here/">Full story</a>
</article>

<div itemprop="worksFor publisher" itemtype="http://schema.org/Organization" 
    itemscope="" id="organisation"> 
    <meta content="MyOrg" itemprop="name">
    <a href="mailto:hello@example.com" itemprop="email">hello@myorg.com</a>
</div>

The organisation would be the worksFor for the author, and the publisher for the post. What I've put is invalid, worksFor and publisher are both applied to both the post and the author.

Is there a way of achieving what I'm attempting here?

Thanks!

Toby

Answer 1

As noted above:

p and span can’t have a content attribute in Microdata (it’s only defined for the meta element). Either use meta/link and place the human-readable text next to it, or use the data attribute and its value attribute where appropriate.

Here is a sample association using the itemref attribute:

<div id="daughter" itemprop="children" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person">
    <span itemprop="name">Mary</span>
</div>

<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person" itemref="daughter">
    <span itemprop="name">John</span>
</div>

<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person" itemref="daughter">
    <span itemprop="name">Julie</span>
</div>