Content Syndication with RSS

Chapter 7. RSS 1.0 Modules

How can one conceive of a one-party system in a country that has 246 varieties of cheese?

—Charles de Gaulle

The modularization of RSS 1.0 was the second major change that the standard underwent. While the reintroduction of RDF allows you to create graphs of the relationships between RSS items and their attributes, modularization gives you many more attributes to play with in the first place. By using modules, RSS 1.0 can be extended without having to rewrite the core specification and without having to get consensus from the entire RSS community.

RSS 1.0 modules are easy to use. You simply declare the namespace in the root element and then use the new elements in the way the module author intended. In this chapter, we will look at how to use 19 different modules, and then we’ll show you how to write your own.

Module Status

According to the specification, “Modules are classified as Proposed until accepted as Standard by members of the RSS-DEV working group or a sub-membership thereof focused on the area addressed by the module.”

Currently, there are only 3 modules classified as Standard— Dublin Core, Syndication, and Content—and at least 16 that are Proposed. The Proposed classifications, however, should not stop you from using the modules — it indicates only the lack of a schedule for voting on the modules, not a lack of merit. These modules may well be accepted as Standard in the future. So, to reflect this, here are the current modules, in alphabetical ...