Developing Feeds with RSS and Atom

Creating RSS 2.0 Feeds

RSS 0.91 and 0.92 feeds are created in the same way; the additional elements found in 0.92 are well-handled by the existing RSS tools.

Of course, you can always hand-code your RSS feed. Doing so certainly gets you on top of the standard, but it’s neither convenient, quick, nor recommended. Ordinarily, feeds are created by a small program in one of the scripting languages: Perl, PHP, Python, etc. Many CMSs already create RSS feeds automatically, but you may want to create a feed in another context. Hey, you might even write your own CMS!

There are various ways to create a feed, all of which are used in real life:

XML transformation

Running a transformation on an XML master document converts the relevant parts into RSS. This technique is used in Apache Axkit-based systems, for example.

Templates

You can substitute values within a RSS feed template. This technique is used within most weblogging platforms, for example.

An RSS-specific module or class within a scripting language

This method is used within hundreds of little ad hoc scripts across the Net, for example.

We’ll look at all three methods, but let’s start with the third, using an RSS-specific module. In this case, it’s Perl’s XML::RSS.

Creating RSS with Perl Using XML::RSS

The XML::RSS module is one of the key tools in the Perl RSS world. It is built on top of XML::Parser—the basis for many Perl XML modules—and is object-oriented. Actually, XML::RSS also supports the creation of the older versions of RSS, plus ...