Country specific rating

If your age rating is the same for the whole world it is very easy to implement this in the age.xml. Just include an <ageblock-country> like this and you are done.

One age rating for all countries:

<ageblock-country>
   <country class="age.xml">
      <country-code>all</country-code>
   </country>
   <country-default>age.xml</country-default>
</ageblock-country>

Different age ratings for different countries

But maybe you have different age ratings for different countries or regions of the world. Culture already varies greatly within the European Union and the differences are even greater around the world.

age.xml has a solution for that. You can have one age.xml plus different country age-xx.xml such as age-de.xml, age-fr.xml, age-us.xml (together we call them age-xx.xml), etc. There are also defined regions so that you don’t have to install as many xml files as there are countries in the world.

We recommend using our label generator if you decide to make different age ratings for different countries. Just select countries and define the age and you’ll get the right age.xml together with all necessary age-xx.xml files. Upload them all at the root of your website and you are done.

If you want to do country-specific age ratings of your own, you will need:

• One age.xml file to define which age-xx.xml file is valid for which country and to work as a default for missing countries or files
• One age-xx.xml file per country or region for which you have different age ratings. One age-xx.xml file can cover more than one country.

 For the definition of countries age.xml uses ISO-3166-1  (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166‐1)

Example of an <ageblock-country> in your age.xml file defining country specific age rating:

<ageblock-country>
  <country class="age-de.xml">
     <country-code>DE</country-code>
     <country-code>AT</country-code>
     <country-code>CH</country-code>
   </country>
   <country class="age-nl.xml">
      <country-code>NL</country-code>
      </country>
   <country class="age-xec.xml">
     <country-code>xec</country-code>
   </country>
   <country-default>age.xml</country-default>
</ageblock-country>

In this example is defined:

• age-de.xml is valid in Germany (DE), Austria (AT) and Switzerland (CH)
• age-nl.xml is valid in Netherlands (NL)
• age-xec.xml is valid in all countries in Europe except DE, AT, CH, NL
• age.xml is valid in all other countries of the world and is the default if the other age-xx.xml files are missing

Note: order = priority. The more specific a country definition, the higher it has to be.

How does country-specific age-xx.xml look like?

Country-specific age-xx.xml like age-uk.-xml, age-at.xml, age-xec.xml etc. follow the same definition as age.xml. The only difference is that there is no <ageblock-country> in the age-xx.xml as it doesn’t make sense there.

Note: Because of historical differences of age-de.xml in Germany (age-de.xml started in 2010), there is a <label-version>1.0</label-version> of age-de.xml with a slightly different definition. After a transition period, age-de.xml will have the same definition as all other age-xx.xml files. In the meantime, our label generator automatically generates the right (old) age-de.xml version.

Country specific age categories

Age categories are specific to countries and rating bodies. A list of known age categories by country or rating body you can find here.

Definition of regions in the age.xml

You might use region codes to save typing many ISO codes for all countries in the age.xml. Composition of the regions is defined by the United Nations Statistic Devision, see:  http://unstats.un.org/unsd/methods/m49/m49regin.htm

Lists of countries with ISO codes

For latest updates see http://unstats.un.org/unsd/methods/m49/m49regin.htm. In case of changes the current list from United Nations Statistics Division is valid.