Useful Site Links for RSS Info

by Phil 'iwonder' Guerra

--- (Mission, KS) - I've been asked about how one goes about learning about RSS in general, and how to learn more about DNN's usage of it. I'll post some links to sites, posts, and articles, I've found useful for folks from novice to advanced. Again, links change so frequently, just drop me a comment, or email if one goes sour.

DNN Creative - DNN and RSS content - Lee Sykes developed this site years back. He has a lot of information on RSS and DNN. Some content is free, while other is available via subscription. At last check the RSS information was still free, with some of it culled from DNN forums and smartly organized by Lee. Good info all around for RSS, a nice tutorial for newbies. Although, many of the examples are using the older RSS module, the basic info about RSS is still relevant.

RSS and Atom Specifications

If you are going to work with RSS, you'll want to examine the following sites, which speak to the actual specifications for RSS. DNN, currently uses RSS internally, and the new module is supposed to seamlessly support various RSS specifiations, but as I've mentioned before there are quite a few 'gotchas'. Whenever I'm in doubt about a particular news source's implementation, I refer to these sites for reference.

Now, truthfully, there is wide disagreement over which spec and version to adopt. In the end, the choice as a developer is up to you. The only thing that really matters is that you take the time to follow the specs. Nothing is worse than a feed that says it's a certain RSS or Atom feed implementation, and then does not follow the defined specs.

RSS v2.0 Specifications - Official RSS Advisory Board - The keeper of the specification changed, but the information is the same. Here on this site is a wealth of information about RSS v2.0, including samples, and explainations of the specification. If you are a developer writing a news generator for RSS v2.0, you really have no excuse for not learning all you can, which includes all of the information about what is and what is not valid usage. If you are using RSS newfeeds, you really need to understand the specification to get the most use out of any newsfeed that utilizes RSS v2.0. Other versions of RSS are archived and linked from this site, as well.

Atom v1.0 - This document specifies Atom, an XML-based Web content and metadata syndication format. It's not the user friendly format site, but the RFC document. Again, this spec should be something you know to get the most out of any Atom feed.


Atom Enabled v0.3 and v1.0 - This is a nice site with loads of information. Not as dry as the RFC, but I refer to it becuase it, also, describes the protocol for the publishing world.


Custom Namespaces

Namespace references are utilized within newsfeeds to extend the RSS version specifications. As RSS has evolved, the specs originally conceived with RSS could not envision the many usages that syndication adopters needed. The ability to extend the specifications was a way to offer the ability to allow for the future. Take a look at the source of your newsfeed, and I'd bet you'll find a custom namespace thrown in to use some custom xml tag contained in it. Just like the RSS specs, by definition a custom namespace needs a reference for developers to understand what is and isn't allowed. Most news readers will check the specs and fail to present any unknown tags or invalid usage. It isn't always clear cut, but understanding these custom tags begins with knowing about their implementation.

Dublin Core (DC) - The document in this link summarizes the updated definitions for the Dublin Core metadata elements as originally defined in [RFC2413]. These new definitions will be officially known as Version 1.1. The tags defined are used quite frequently in the more popular newsfeeds.

Newsfeed Validation

Many times you wonder about a news feed source. Especially, using DNN's latest version, which gives almost no worthwhile information if a feed fails. Just getting a 'download error' message does you no good. So, how can you tell what's going on? Well, as Ian Anderson from Jethro Tull proclaimed 'Nothing Is Easy'. If you continue to run into issues. One step I highly recommend is to validate your newsfeed source. You'll get an idea of the kind of errors that are likely to be thrown by a 'good' newsfeed reader.

W3C Feed Validation Service, for Atom and RSS - There are more than a couple of sites that allow validation on-line, and this is the one I use most often. The site pointed to in the above link is useful for Atom and RSS.