Developing Feeds with RSS and Atom
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.
Developing Feeds with RSS and Atom
Chapter 1. Introduction
Section 1.1. What Are RSS and Atom for?
Section 1.2. A Short History of RSS and Atom
Section 1.3. Why Syndicate Your Content?
Section 1.4. Legal Implications
Chapter 2. Using Feeds
Section 2.1. Web-Based Applications
Section 2.2. Desktop Applications
Section 2.3. Other Cunning Techniques
Section 2.4. Finding Feeds to Read
Chapter 3. Feeds Without Programming
Section 3.1. From Email
Section 3.2. From a Search Engine
Section 3.3. From Online Stores
Chapter 4. RSS 2.0
Section 4.1. Bringing Things Up to Date
Section 4.2. The Basic Structure
Section 4.3. Producing RSS 2.0 with Blogging Tools
Section 4.4. Introducing Modules
Section 4.5. Creating RSS 2.0 Feeds
Chapter 5. RSS 1.0
Section 5.1. Metadata in RSS 2.0
Section 5.2. Resource Description Framework
Section 5.3. RDF in XML
Section 5.4. Introducing RSS 1.0
Section 5.5. The Specification in Detail
Section 5.6. Creating RSS 1.0 Feeds
Chapter 6. RSS 1.0 Modules
Section 6.1. Module Status
Section 6.2. Support for Modules in Common Applications
Section 6.3. Other RSS 1.0 Modules
Chapter 7. The Atom Syndication Format
Section 7.1. Introducing Atom
Section 7.2. The Atom Entry Document in Detail
Section 7.3. Producing Atom Feeds
Chapter 8. Parsing and Using Feeds
Section 8.1. Important Issues
Section 8.2. JavaScript Display Parsers
Section 8.3. Parsing for Programming
Section 8.4. Using Regular Expressions
Section 8.5. Using XSLT
Section 8.6. Client-Side Inclusion
Section 8.7. Server-Side Inclusion
Chapter 9. Feeds in the Wild
Section 9.1. Once You Have Created Your Simple RSS Feed
Section 9.2. Publish and Subscribe
Section 9.3. Rolling Your Own: LinkPimp PubSub
Section 9.4. LinkpimpClient.pl
Chapter 10. Unconventional Feeds
Section 10.1. Apache Logfiles
Section 10.2. Code TODOs to RSS
Section 10.3. Daily Doonesbury
Section 10.4. Amazon.com Wishlist to RSS
Section 10.5. FedEx Parcel Tracker
Section 10.6. Google to RSS with SOAP
Section 10.7. Last-Modified Files
Section 10.8. Installed Perl Modules
Section 10.9. The W3C Validator to RSS
Section 10.10. Game Statistics to Excel
Section 10.11. Feeds by SMS
Section 10.12. Podcasting Weather Forecasts
Section 10.13. Having Amazon Produce Its Own RSS Feeds
Section 10.14. Cross-Poster for Movable Type
Chapter 11. Developing New Modules
Section 11.1. Namespaces and Modules Within RSS 2.0 and Atom
Section 11.2. Case Study: mod_Book
Section 11.3. Extending Your Desktop Reader
Section 11.4. Introducing AmphetaDesk
Appendix A. The XML You Need for RSS
Section A.1. What Is XML?
Section A.2. Anatomy of an XML Document
Section A.3. Tools for Processing XML
Appendix B. Useful Sites and Software
Section B.1. Uber Resources
Section B.2. Specification Documents
Section B.3. Mailing Lists
Section B.4. Validators
Section B.5. Desktop Readers
How This Book Is Organized
Because RSS and now Atom come in a number of flavors, and there are lots of ways to use them, this book has a lot of parts.
Chapter 1 explains where these things came from and why there is so much diversity in what seems on the surface to be a relatively simple field.
Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 look at what you can do with RSS and Atom without writing code or getting close to the data. Chapter 2 looks at these technologies from the ordinary user's perspective, showing how to read feeds with a number of tools.
Chapter 3 digs deeper into the challenge of creating RSS and Atom feeds, but does so using tools that don't require any programming.
The next four chapters look at the most common varieties of syndication feeds and how to create them.
Chapter 4 examines RSS 2.0, inheritor of the 0.91 line of RSS.
Chapter 5 looks at RSS 1.0, and its rather different philosophy.
Chapter 6 explores the many modules available to extend RSS 1.0.
Chapter 7 looks at a third alternative: the recently emerging Atom specification.
Chapter 8 through Chapter 11 focus on issues that developers building and consuming feeds will need to address. Chapter 8 looks at the complex world of parsing these many flavors of feeds, and the challenges of parsing feeds that aren't always quite right.
Chapter 9 looks at ways to integrate feeds with publishing models, particularly publish-and-subscribe.
Chapter 10 demonstrates a number of applications for feeds that aren't the usual blog entries or news information.
Chapter 11 describes how to extend RSS 2.0 or RSS 1.0 with new modules in case the existing feed structures don't do everything you need.
Finally, there are two appendixes. Appendix A provides a quick tutorial to XML that should give you the foundation you need to work with feeds, while Appendix B provides a list of sites and software you can explore while figuring out how best to apply these technologies to your projects.