According to ND
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss
RSS At Harvard Law
Syndication technology hosted by the Berkman Center
RSS 2.0 Specification
Contents
What is rs? Sample Files About this Document Required Channel Elements Optional Channel Elements Elements Of
What is rss?
RSS Directory
About this websiteSpecificationsFeedsAggregatorsValidatorsHowtos / ArticlesToolsUtilitiesRSS is a Web content syndication format.
ITS Name is an Acronym for
Really Simple Syndication.
RSS IS A DIALECT OF XML. All RSS Files Must Conform To The XML 1.0
Specification, AS Published on The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Website.
A Summary of
RSS VERSION HISTORY.
At the top level, a RSS document is a
Subordinate to the
Sample Files
Here Are Sample Files for: RSS
0.91,
0.92 and
2.0.
Note That The Sample Files May Point To Documents and Services That No Longer Exist. The 0.91 Sample Was Created WHEN THE 0.91 DOCS WERE WERE WRITTEN. Maintaining a TRAIL OF SAMPLES Seem Like a Good Idea.
About this document
This Document Represents The Status of RSS AS of The Fall Of 2002, Version 2.0.1.
IT INCORPORATES All Changes and Additions, Starting with The Basic Spec for
RSS 0.91 (June 2000) and incdude new features introduces
RSS 0.92 (DECEMBER 2000) and RSS 0.94 (August 2002).
Change Notes Are
Here.
First we document the required and optional sub-elements of
Here's a list of the Required Channel Elements, Each with a brief Description, An Example, And Where Available, a Pointer to a more complete design.
ElementDescriptionExampletitleThe name of the channel. It's how people refer to your service. If you have an HTML website that contains the same information as your RSS file, the title of your channel should be the same as the title of your website. GoUpstate.com News HeadlineslinkThe URL to the HTML website corresponding to the channel.http: //www.goupstate.com/description Phrase or sentence describing the channel.The latest news from GoUpstate.com, a Spartanburg Herald-Journal Web site.
Optional Channel Elements
Here's a list of optional channel elements.
ElementDescriptionExamplelanguageThe language the channel is written in. This allows aggregators to group all Italian language sites, for example, on a single page. A list of allowable values for this element, as provided by Netscape, is here. You may also use values defined by the W3C.en-uscopyrightCopyright notice for content in the channel.Copyright 2002, Spartanburg Herald-JournalmanagingEditorEmail address for person responsible for editorial content.geo@herald.com (George Matesky) webMasterEmail address for person responsible for technical issues relating to channel.betty @ herald.com (Betty Guernsey) pubDateThe publication date for the content in the channel. for example, the New York Times publishes on a daily basis, the publication date flips once every 24 hours. That's when the pubDate of the channel changes. All Date-Times In Rss Conform To The Date And Time Specification of RFC 822, with the Exception That The Year May Be Expressed with Two Characters Or Four Characters (Four P referred) .Sat, 07 Sep 2002 00:00:01 GMTlastBuildDateThe last time the content of the channel changed.Sat, 07 Sep 2002 09:42:31 GMTcategorySpecify one or more categories that the channel belongs to. Follows the same rules as the
s for people who might stumble across an RSS file on a Web server 25 years from now and wonder what it is.http: //blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rsscloudAllows processes to register with a cloud to be notified of updates to the channel, implementing a lightweight publish-subscribe protocol for RSS feeds. More info here.
.
is The Url of the Site, When The Channel Is Rendered, The Image, In Practice The Image
Optional elements include
Maximum Value for Height IS 400, Default Value IS 31.
IT Specifies A Web Service That Supports The Rsscloud Interface Which Can Be Implement In Http-Post, XML-RPC OR SOAP 1.1.
ITS Purpose Is To Allow Processes To Register With a Cloud To Be Notified of Updates To The Channel, IMPLEMENTING A LIGHTWEIGHT PUBLISH-SUBSCRIBE PROTOCOL for RSS feeds.
In this Example, To Request Notification On The Channel It Appers in, You Would Send An XML-RPC Message To Rpc.sys.com on Port 80, with a path of / rpc2. The procedure to call is mycloud.rspleasenotify.
A Full Explanation of this element and the rsscloud interface IS
Here.
ttl stands for time to live. It's a number of minutes that indicates how long a channel can be cached before refreshing from the source. This makes it possible for RSS sources to be managed by a file-sharing network such as
Gnutella.
Example:
A Channel May Optionally Contain A
- The Url of The CGI Script That Processes Text Input Requests.
The purpose of the
Elements of
A Channel May Contain Any Number of
EXAMPLES), AND the link and title may be omitted. All Elements of anly.
ElementDescriptionExampleTitlethe Title of the item.venice Film Festival Tries To Quit SinkingLinkthe Url of The item/2004/07fest.htmldescription The item synopsis.
Some of the most heated chatter at the Venice Film Festival this week was about the way that the arrival of the stars at the Palazzo del Cinema was being staged.authorEmail address of the author of the item. More.categoryIncludes the item in one or more categories. More.commentsURL of a page for comments relating to the item. More.enclosureDescribes a media object that is attached to the item. More.guidA string that uniquely identifies the item. More.pubDateIndicates when the item was published. More.sourceThe RSS Channel That The Item Came from. More.
ITS Value Is The Name of the RSs Channel That The Item Came from, Derived from Its
The purpose of this element is to propagate credit for links, to publicize the sources of news items. It can be used in the Post command of an aggregator. It should be generated automatically when forwarding an item from an aggregator to a weblog authoring tool.
IT Has Three Required Attribute 40, Length Says How Big It Is in Bytes, And Type Says What ITS TYPE IS, A Standard Mime Type.
The URL Must Be an HTTP URL.
A Use-Case Narrative for this Element IS
Here.
IT Has One Optional Attribute, Domain, A String That Identifies a Categorization Taxonomy.
.. The value of the element is a forward-slash-separated string that identifies a hierarchic location in the indicated taxonomy Processors may establish conventions for the interpretation of categories Two examples are provided below:
You May include as a.
ITS Value IS A
Date, INDICATING WHEN THE ITEM WAS PUBLISHED. IF IT'S MAY Choose to Not Display The Item Until That Date.
Guid Stands for Globally Unique Identifier. It's a string That Unique Identifies The item. When present, An Aggregator May Choose To Use this string to determine if an item is new.
The uniqueness of the string.
If the guid element has an attribute named "isPermaLink" with a value of true, the reader may assume that it is a permalink to the item, that is, a url that can be opened in a Web browser, that points to the full item Described by the
ISPERMALINK IS OPTIONAL, ITS DEFAULT VALUE IS TRUE. If ITS Value IS False, The Guid May Not Be Assumed to BE A URL, OR A URL TO Anything In Particular.
IF present, it is the url of the comments page for the item.
More About Comments
Here.
It's the email address of the author of the item. For newspapers and magazines syndicating via RSS, the author is the person who wrote the article that the
Comments
RSS Places Restrictions on The First Non-Whitespace Characters of The Data IN and
IANA-Registered Uri Scheme, Such as http: //, https: //, news: //, mailto: and ftp: //. Prior to rss 2.0, the specification only allowed http: // and ftp: //, however, in practice other URI schemes were in use by content developers and supported by aggregators. aggregators may have limits on the URI schemes they support. Content developers should not assume that all aggregators support all schemes.In RSS 0.91, various elements are restricted to 500 or 100 characters. There can be no more than 15
IN RSS 2.0,
a provision is made for linking a channel to its identifier in a cataloging system, using the channel-level category feature, described above. For example, to link a channel to its Syndic8 identifier, include a category element as a sub-element of < channel>, with domain "Syndic8", and value the identifier for your channel in the Syndic8 database. The appropriate category element for Scripting News would be
A frequently asked Question About
RSS2-Support Mail List, Hosted by Sjoerd VisScher. This is not a debtyning list, but serves as a support resource for users, Authors and Developers Who Are Creating and use Content In RSS 2.0 Format.
Extending RSS
RSS originated in 1999, and has strived to be a simple, easy to understand format, with relatively modest goals. After it became a popular format, developers wanted to extend it using modules defined in namespaces, as
Specified by the W3C.
RSS 2.0 Adds That Capability, FOLLOWING A Simple Rule. A RSS feed May Contain Elements Not Described on this page, "ONLY Those Elements Are Defined In A Namespace.
The elements defined in this document are not themselves members of a namespace, so that RSS 2.0 can remain compatible with previous versions in the following sense -. A version 0.91 or 0.92 file is also a valid 2.0 file If the elements of RSS 2.0 were IN A Namespace, This Construction 0.9x File
Would Not Be a Valid 2.0 file.
Roadmap
RSS is by no means a perfect format, but it is very popular and widely supported. Having a settled spec is something RSS has needed for a long time. The purpose of this work is to help it become a unchanging thing, to foster growth in the market that is developing around it, and to clear the path for innovation in new syndication formats. Therefore, the RSS spec is, for all practical purposes, frozen at version 2.0.1. We anticipate possible 2.0.2 or 2.0.3 versions , etc. only for the purpose of clarifying the specification, not for adding new features to the format. Subsequent work should happen in modules, using namespaces, and in completely new syndication formats, with new names.License and authorship
RSS 2.0 is offreed by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society At Harvard Law School Under The Terms of The Attribution / Share Alike Creative Commons
.
Unless OtherWise Labeled by Its Originating Author, The Content Found ON this site is master available under the terminal of an attribution / share alike creative commit
license, with the exception that no rights are granted - since they are not ours to grant - in any logo, graphic design, trademarks or trade names, including the Harvard name Last update:. Sunday, January 30, 2005 at 6: 14:58 pm. Published by the RSS Advisory Board:
ROGERS CADENHEAD,
ADAM CURRY, AND Steve Zellers.