Content Syndication (Atom & RSS)

Web Architecture and Information Management [./]
Spring 2011 — INFO 153 (CCN 42509)

Erik Wilde and Dilan Mahendran, UC Berkeley School of Information
2011-04-04

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Contents Erik Wilde and Dilan Mahendran: Content Syndication (Atom & RSS)

Contents

Erik Wilde and Dilan Mahendran: Content Syndication (Atom & RSS)

(2) Abstract

For many information sources on the Web, it is useful to have some standardized way of subscribing to information updates. Syndication formats such as RSS and Atom can be used by these information sources to publish a feed of updated information items. Feeds can be read directly in a browser, but in most cases they are read by specialized software; either a feed reader that allows users to subscribe to more than one feed and manage the information received through all these feeds, or some software module that reads feeds and embeds them for example in a Web page. This latter example is the classical usage of feeds; news feeds published by news agencies, and then embedded as news tickers into Web pages as a constantly updated source of information.



Erik Wilde and Dilan Mahendran: Content Syndication (Atom & RSS)

(3) Syndication



Erik Wilde and Dilan Mahendran: Content Syndication (Atom & RSS)

(4) Content Feeds



Syndication Formats

Outline (Syndication Formats)

  1. Syndication Formats [10]
  2. Using Feeds [10]
    1. Browser Handling [5]
    2. Feed Readers [5]

(6) RSS History



(7) The Case for Content Management



(8) Consuming RSS



(9) Atom History

atom-logo.png

(10) Atom vs. RSS



(11) Atom Example

<feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xml:lang="en-us">
 <title>ongoing</title>
 <id>http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/</id>
 <link rel='self' href="http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/ongoing.atom"/>
 <updated>2007-04-11T12:55:09-07:00</updated>
 <author>
  <name>Tim Bray</name>
 </author>
 <subtitle>ongoing fragmented essay by Tim Bray</subtitle>
 <entry xml:base="When/200x/2007/04/02/">
  <title>Atom Publishing Protocol Interop!</title>
  <id>http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2007/04/02/APP-Interop</id>
  <published>2007-04-02T13:00:00-07:00</published>
  <updated>2007-04-10T14:24:00-07:00</updated>
  <category scheme="http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/" term="Technology/Atom"/>
  <category scheme="http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/" term="Technology"/>
  <category scheme="http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/" term="Atom"/>
  <content type="xhtml">
   <div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
    <p>Mark your calendar: <a href="http://www.intertwingly.net/wiki/pie/April2007Interop">April 16-17 at Google</a>. <em>Everybody</em> is invited, provided they bring along an APP implementation, client or server. This was just announced a couple of days ago, and as I write this there are already <s>six</s> twelve client and <s>seven</s> fourteen server implementations signed up to be there and try to <a href="http://www.intertwingly.net/wiki/pie/InteropGrid">fill in the grid</a>. Let’s drop some names, in alphabetical order: AOL, Flock, Google, IBM, Lotus, Microsoft, Oracle, O’Reilly, Six Apart, Sun, WordPress. Um, have I mentioned that the APP is going to be huge?</p>
   </div>
  </content>
 </entry>
</feed>


(12) Atom Content



(13) Atom Content Examples

<content type="xhtml">
        <div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
        One <strong>bold</strong> foot forward
        </div>
        </content>
[http://www.xml.com/lpt/a/1633]
<content>The "atom:content" element either contains or links to the content of the entry. The content of atom:content is Language-Sensitive.</content>
[http://www.xml.com/lpt/a/1633]
<content type="html">The &lt;code>atom:content&lt;/code> element either contains or links to the content of the entry. The content of &lt;code>atom:content&lt;/code> is &lt;a href="http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3066.txt">Language-Sensitive&lt;/a>.</content>
[http://www.xml.com/lpt/a/1633]
<content type="image/png">
        iVBORw0KGgoA … TAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC
        </content>
[http://www.xml.com/lpt/a/1633]
<content src="image.png" type="image/png"/>
[http://www.xml.com/lpt/a/1633]

(14) Atom Categories



(15) Podcasts



Using Feeds

Outline (Using Feeds)

  1. Syndication Formats [10]
  2. Using Feeds [10]
    1. Browser Handling [5]
    2. Feed Readers [5]

Browser Handling

Outline (Browser Handling)

  1. Syndication Formats [10]
  2. Using Feeds [10]
    1. Browser Handling [5]
    2. Feed Readers [5]

(19) Internet Explorer

Feed Display in Internet Explorer

Feed Readers

Outline (Feed Readers)

  1. Syndication Formats [10]
  2. Using Feeds [10]
    1. Browser Handling [5]
    2. Feed Readers [5]

(28) Planet

  • Planet [http://www.planetplanet.org/] is a feed reader intended to be installed on a web server
  • Although it could be used by a single person, more typically it is used to aggregate a number of feeds relevant to a community
  • Mainly used by software development communities to bring together posts of interest
  • Good example of how any feed reader is potentially also a feed creator: enabling community curation and aggregation of content
  • Nice example: NYT blogs [http://www.nytimes.com/ref/topnews/blog-index.html]


Erik Wilde and Dilan Mahendran: Content Syndication (Atom & RSS)

(29) Simple Web Services



2011-04-04 Web Architecture and Information Management [./]
Spring 2011 — INFO 153 (CCN 42509)