book

Content Syndication with RSS

by Ben Hammersley

March 2003

Intermediate to advanced

224 pages

6h 27m

English

O'Reilly Media, Inc.

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Audience
What Is Content Syndication?
HotSauce: MCF and RDFChannel Definition FormatRSS First AppearsThe Standards EvolveThe First ForkThe Second ForkFuture DevelopmentsDesktop HeadlinesRegistries, Aggregators, and Search EnginesCorporate IntranetsRSS on Other Platforms

Information Flow and Other Metaphors
Consuming the Feed
RSS 0.91The Specification in Summary
The Specification in Summary
The Specification in Summary
The Specification in Summary
RSS 0.91The Basic StructureRequired channel SubelementsOptional channel Subelementsitem ElementsSpecial Notes for RSS 0.91
Changes to Existing ElementsNew Elements to RSS 0.92
Creating RSS with Perl Using XML::RSSCreating an RSS feed with the Google SOAP API
Publish a LinkRegistering with AggregatorsMetadata for the Main Page
Metadata in RSS 0.9xUsing URIs in RSS
Resources, PropertyTypes, and PropertiesNodes and ArcsFitting RDF with RSS
The Root Element<element rdf:about="URI OF ELEMENT"><element rdf:resource="URI” />RDF Containersrdf:Bagrdf:Seqrdf:Alt
Walking Through an RSS 1.0 document
The Basic StructureThe Root Element<channel rdf:about=""> (a Subelement of rdf:RDF)Required subelements of channel<image rdf:resource=""> (a Subelement of rdf:RDF)<textinput rdf:about=""> (a Subelement of rdf:RDF)<item rdf:about=""> (a Subelement of rdf:RDF)
Creating RSS 1.0 with PerlCreating RSS Feeds from Amazon.com’s Web ServiceXML to data to RSS
Module Status
The Specification in DetailWhen a guid Is Not a GUIDChanges from RSS 0.92
BlogChannel Module
Using RSS Feeds Inside Another SiteParsing RSS as Simply as PossibleXML parsersRegular Expressions
Transforming RSS with XSLTClient-Side InclusionServer-Side InclusionEnabling server-side includes within Apache 1.3.xServer-side includes with Microsoft IIS
Directories: Introducing Syndic8Registering Your Feed with Syndic8Using Syndic8Syndic8 API
The Meerkat API
A Little HistoryCommon FeaturesAutomatic subscribingBlogrolls and subscription listsOutline Processor Markup Language (OPML)
Namespaces and Modules with RSS 2.0Differences from RSS 1.0
What Do We Know?Can We Express This Data Already?Putting the New Elements to Work with RSS 2.0Putting the New Elements to Work with RSS 1.0Documentation
Installing AmphetaDeskindex.html
Introducing Publish and SubscribePublish and Subscribe Within RSS 0.92 and 2.0Publish and Subscribe with RSS 1.0
LinkpimpListener.pl
What Is XML?
Elements and AttributesName SyntaxWell-FormednessCommentsEntity ReferencesCharacter ReferencesCharacter EncodingsUnicode encoding schemesOther character encodingsValidityDocument Type Definitions (DTDs)Putting It TogetherXML Namespaces
Selecting a ParserXSLT Processors
Specification Documents

Content preview from Content Syndication with RSS

RSS 0.92

RSS 0.92 followed 0.91 in December 2000. It is a historic curiosity that RSS 0.92 actually followed RSS 1.0 by two weeks. By this time, Netscape’s interest in all things RSS had waned, and the job of formalizing the latest developments in the simpler side of RSS was taken up by Userland’s Dave Winer, building on his previous role of elucidating the RSS 0.91 specification. The 0.92 specification builds extensively on 0.91 and is upwardly compatible with it. Therefore, all 0.91 files are also valid 0.92 files.

Changes to Existing Elements

<rss version="0.91"> becomes <rss version="0.92">.
All character limits are now removed. Elements can be as long as you like.
You can have as many item elements as you like.
All subelements of item are optional.
language is now optional.

New Elements to RSS 0.92

RSS 0.92 also introduced four new elements into RSS:

<source url="">: An optional subelement of item. It should contain the name of the RSS feed of the site from which the item is derived, and the attribute url should be the URL of the other site’s RSS feed.
<enclosure url="" length="" type=""/>: An optional subelement of item used to describe a file associated with an item. It has no content, but it takes three attributes: url is the URL of the enclosure, length is its size in bytes, and type is the standard MIME type for the enclosure.
<category domain="">: An optional subelement of item that takes one attribute, domain. The value of category should be a forward slash-separated ...