RSS Feed

I want to read about RSS feeds so I can learn about receive updates from a website in a standardized format.

Date Created:

References

RSS Wikipedia Article

Web Feed
- On the World Wide Web, a web feed (or news feed) is a data format used for providing users with frequently updated content. Content distributors syndicate a web feed, thereby allowing users to subscribe a channel to it by adding the feed resource address to a news aggregator client (also called a feed reader or a news reader). Users typically subscribe to a feed by manually entering the URL of a feed or clicking a link in a web browser or by fragging the link from the web browser to the aggregator, thus RSS and Atom files provide news updates from a website in a simple form for your computer.
- A web feed is a document whose discrete content items include web links to the source of the content. Common web feeds are:
- - Atom
  - JSON feed
  - RSS

News Aggregator
- In computing, a news aggregator, also termed a feed aggregator, content aggregator, feed reader, news reader, or simply an aggregator, is client software or a web application that aggregates digital content such as online newspapers, blogs, podcasts, and video blogs (vlogs) in one location for easy viewing.
Atom
- The name Atom applies to a pair of related Web Standards. The Atom Syndication Format is an XML language used for web feeds, while the Atom Publishing Protocol (AtomPub or APP) is a simple HTTP-based protocol for creating and updating web resources.
- Web feeds allow software programs to check for updates published on a website. To provide a web feed, the site owner may use specialized software that publishes a list (or feed) of recent articles in a standardized, machine-readable format. A feed contains entries, which may be headlines, full-text articles, excerpts, summaries or links to content on a website along with various metadata.
- The blogging community uses web feeds to share recent entries' headlines, full text, and even attached multimedia files.
- It is common to find web feeds on major websites, as well as on many smaller ones. Some websites let people choose between RSS- or Atom-formatted web feeds; others offer only RSS or only Atom. In particular, many blog and wiki sites offer their web feeds in the Atom format.
- A feed reader or aggregator program can be used to check feeds and to display new articles. Web-based feed readers and news aggregators require no software installation and make the user's feeds available on any computer with web access.

Notes

RSS (RDF Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) is a web feed that allows users and applications to access updates to websites in a standardized, computer-readable format. Subscribing to RSS feeds can allow a user to keep track of many different websites in a single news aggregator, which constantly monitors sites for new content, removing the need for the user to manually check them. News aggregators (or RSS readers) can be built into a browser, installed on a desktop computer, or installed on a mobile device.

Websites usually use RSS feeds to publish frequently updated information, such as blogs, news headlines, episodes of audio and video series, or for distributing podcasts. An RSS document includes full or summarized text, and metadata, like publishing date and author's name. RSS formats are specified using a generic XML file.

RSS gained popularity in 2005-2006. RSS feed data is presented to users using software called a news aggregator and the passing of content is called web syndication.

Example

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<rss version="2.0">
<channel>
 <title>RSS Title</title>
 <description>This is an example of an RSS feed</description>
 <link>http://www.example.com/main.html</link>
 <copyright>2020 Example.com All rights reserved</copyright>
 <lastBuildDate>Mon, 6 Sep 2010 00:01:00 +0000</lastBuildDate>
 <pubDate>Sun, 6 Sep 2009 16:20:00 +0000</pubDate>
 <ttl>1800</ttl>

 <item>
  <title>Example entry</title>
  <description>Here is some text containing an interesting description.</description>
  <link>http://www.example.com/blog/post/1</link>
  <guid isPermaLink="false">7bd204c6-1655-4c27-aeee-53f933c5395f</guid>
  <pubDate>Sun, 6 Sep 2009 16:20:00 +0000</pubDate>
 </item>

</channel>
</rss>

When retrieved, RSS reading software could use the XML structure to present a neat display to the end users. There are various news aggregator softwares for desktop and mobile devices, but RSS can also be built-in inside web browsers or email clients.

Although the number of items in an RSS channel is theoretically unlimited, some news aggregators do not support RSS files larger than 150kB. Podcasts are distributed using RSS. To listen to a podcast, a user adds the RSS feed to their podcast client, and the client can then list available episodes and download or stream them for listening or viewing.

Both RSS and Atom are widely supported and compatible with all major consumer feed readers. RSS gained wider use because of early feed reader support. The following table shows RSS elements alongside Atom elements where they are equivalent.


RSS 2.0	Atom 1.0
`author`	`author`*
`category`	`category`
`channel`	`feed`
`copyright`	`rights`
—	`subtitle`
`description`*	`summary` or `content`
`generator`	`generator`
`guid`	`id`*
`image`	`logo`
`item`	`entry`
`lastBuildDate` (in `channel`)	`updated`*
`link`*	`link`*
`managingEditor`	`author` or `contributor`
`pubDate`	`published` (subelement of `entry`)
`title`*	`title`*
`ttl`	—

Several major sites such as Facebook and Twitter previously offered RSS feeds but have reduced or removed support. Since the late 2010s, there has been an uptick in RSS interest again. Chrome on Android has added the ability to follow RSS feeds as of 2021.

RSS Feed

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