Developing Feeds with RSS and Atom: Developers Guide to Syndicating News & Blogs

by Ben Hammersley

Perhaps the most explosive technological trend over the past two years has been blogging. As a matter of fact, it's been reported that the number of blogs during that time has grown from 100,000 to 4.8 million-with no end to this growth in sight. What's the technology that makes blogging tick? The answer is RSS--a format that allows bloggers to offer XML-based feeds of their content. It's also the same technology that's incorporated into the websites of media outlets so they can offer material (headlines, links, articles, etc.) syndicated by other sites. As the main technology behind this rapidly growing field of content syndication, RSS is constantly evolving to keep pace with worldwide demand. That's where Developing Feeds with RSS and Atom steps in. It provides bloggers, web developers, and programmers with a thorough explanation of syndication in general and the most popular technologies used to develop feeds. This book not only highlights all the new features of RSS 2.0-the most recent RSS specification-but also offers complete coverage of its close second in the XML-feed arena, Atom. The book has been exhaustively revised to explain: After an introduction that examines Internet content syndication in general (its purpose, limitations, and traditions), this step-by-step guide tackles various RSS and Atom vocabularies, as well as techniques for applying syndication to problems beyond news feeds. Most importantly, it gives you a firm handle on how to create your own feeds, and consume or combine other feeds. If you're interested in producing your own content feed, Developing Feeds with RSS and Atom is the one book you'll want in hand.

Genres: Technical, Programming, Web

270 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like most O'Reilly books, this is as lively and interesting as it can be considering the subject matter. The only part that what was a bit hard going, and it may be my own dimness, was the section on the relationship between RDF, XML, and RSS (.91, .92, 1.0 and 2.0). I think RDF is conceptually tricky and may need a longer section devoted to it. On the whole, however, this book has come to help me tremendously in my work.

[Topilno]

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