Really Simple Syndication (RSS)

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is technology that can be used on Websites to syndicate and distribute frequently updated content via news aggregators.

Syndication benefits both users and publishers by helping users consume more information instead of visiting multiple web sites to see what's new, users can scan headlines or article summaries and click to read the full text. Some publishers also make their entire content (whether full-text or audio/video) available for users to access via RSS and view in other applications. It's "really simple" for publishers to make content available in this format.

RSS is also a special XML based language used to create RSS files on Websites that contains headlines or summaries of news, or site contents to allow news aggregators to fetch and redistribute.

A RSS 2.0 file looks like the sample RSS 2.0 document below:

<?xml version="1.0"?>

<rss version="2.0">

<channel>

<title>Developer HTML Tutorial and Tips</title>

<link>http://www.rendc.org/html/</link>

<description>Massive collection of frequently asked

questions by developers with clear answers and

tutorials tips.

</description>

<language>en-us</language>

<pubDate>Sat, 1 Jul 2006 04:00:00 GMT</pubDate>

<webMaster>noreply@rendc.org</webMaster>

<item>

<title>CSS Tutorial Tips</title>

<link>http://www.rendc.org/css/</link>

<description>A collection of FAQs on CSS and Atom

introduction and generation of feed files.</description>

<pubDate>Sat, 1 Jul 2006 04:00:00 GMT</pubDate>

<guid>http://www.globalguidelinecom/xml/</guid>

</item>

</channel>

</rss>

An Atom 1.0 file looks like the sample Atom 1.0 document below:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">

<title>Atom FAQs, Tips and Tutorials</title>

<subtitle>The first Atom document example</subtitle>

<link href="http://www.rendc.org/faq/rss/"/>

<updated>2006-07-13T18:30:02Z</updated>

<author>

<name>rendc.org</name>

<email>noreply@rendc.org</email>

</author>

<id>urn:uuid:60a76c80-d399-11d9-b91C-0003939e0af6</id>

<entry>

<title>Introduction to Atom</title>

<link href="http://rendc.org/faq/rss/index.html"/>

<id>urn:uuid:1225c695-cfb8-4ebb-aaaa-80da344efa6a</id>

<updated>2006-07-13T18:30:02Z</updated>

<summary>A collection of 7 FAQs to introduce you the

basics of RSS and Atom for Website syndication.</summary>

</entry>

</feed>

If you want your Website to support a minimum Atom 1.0 feed, you can follow the tutorial exercise bellow.

1. First create a file called "atom.xml" with the following content:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">

<title>Webmaster globalguideline</title>

<subtitle>A place to find information for Webmasters

</subtitle>

<link rel="self" href="http://rendc.org/atom.xml"/>

<id>http://globalguideline/</id>

<updated>2005-07-13T18:30:02Z</updated>

<author>

<name>rendc.org</name>

<email>noreply@rendc.org</email>

</author>

<entry>

<title>Webmaster FAQ Collection</title>

<link href="http://rendc.org/faq/"/>

<id>http://rendc.org/faq/</id>

<updated>2005-07-13T18:30:02Z</updated>

<summary>A massive collection of FAQs for Webmasters.

</summary>

</entry>

</feed>

2. Relace domain name "rendc.org" with your domain name.

3. Upload "atom.xml" to your Website.

4. Your Website supports Atom 1.0 syndi

w3.org feed validation service is provided at http://validator.w3.org/feed/. It offers you two methods to validate your feed document:

► Validate by URL - Validating a feed file by entering the URL where the feed file is located.

► Validate by Direct Input - Validating a feed file by entering the content of the feed file. But this method is not working at this time.

If you want to the w3.org feed validator, you can follow the tutorial exercise below:

1. Go to http://validator.w3.org/feed/.

2. Enter http://rendc.org/atom.xml into the Address field and click the Check button as shown in following picture:

W3 Atom Feed Validator

3. You should see the validation result page with a "Congratulations" message.

If your Atom feed file fails the w3.org validator, you will get an error message explaining where the error is in your feed file. The tutorial exercise below shows you a good example.

Try to validate the following Atom feed file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">

<title>Webmaster GlobalGuideLine</title>

<subtitle>A place to find information for Webmasters

</subtitle>

<link href="http://GlobalGuideLine.com/atom.xml"/>

<id>http://GlobalGuideLine.com/</id>

<updated>2005-07-13T18:30:02Z</updated>

<author>

<name>GlobalGuideLine.com</name>

<email>noreply@GlobalGuideLine.com</email>

</author>

<entry>

<title>Webmaster FAQ Collection</title>

<link href="http://GlobalGuideLine.com/faq/"/>

<id>http://GlobalGuideLine.com/faq/</id>

<updated>2005-07-13T18:30:02Z</updated>

<summary>A massive collection of FAQs for Webmasters.

</summary>

</entry>

</feed>

You will get the following error message:

line 2, column 3: Missing atom:link with rel="self"

<feed xmlns="http://w

Obviously, there are many ways to create Atom Feed files:

► Using Atom on-line scrapers - On-line scrapers are on-line services that can analyze your Web pages and convert the result into Atom feed files automatically. All you need to do is to provide the URLs of your Web pages.

► Using Atom off-line scrapers - Off-line scrapers are software tools that can analyze your Web pages and convert the result into Atom feed files automatically. All you need to do is to provide your Web page contents to scrapers.

► Using Atom file editors - Creating Atom feed files by entering required data and let the editor to finish the XML elements for you. A good example of Atom file editor is Tristana Writer.

► Using generic text editors - Creating Atom feed files by entering all the required XML elements yourself with generic editors, like UltraEdit or vi.

► Using Atom file generation APIs - APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) are programming packages, modules or libraries that you can interact with in your own programs to perform predefined functions. Atom file generation APIs helps you to write your own programs to generate Atom files. For example, XML::Atom is Atom file generation API for Perl language.